Psyren, Baby
by NishaKadam
Summary: Borderlands 3 can crush my heart but it can't crush my love for this ship. Vignettes of Maya and Kriegs relationship, multiple POV. Comments appreciated.
1. Chapter 1: Short Temper Cook

**Chapter 1: **

Not many things please him as much as screams and boy, there's no shortage of those on Pandora. Sure, some are prettier than others, but all give him that sweet satisfaction, like scratching an itch _just _right.

Bandits and engineers, those are his _favorites. _They're the sweetest scratch on the tumescent scar of his psyche. But he can't always have his sweets, and he can't always scratch the wound. Not now. Not since he met her, the _siren,_ and the rest of the fool's dead set on finding the vault.

I'm just along for the ride and honestly? Vault hunting's not my thing. I gave up on glory and heroics years ago along with shirts and table manners, and him, he's just happy to have someone to murder with. If there's a loot filled monster at the end of this he's fine to smash heads like pumpkins right up until the end but for me there's hollowness in a dream gone by, lost in pain and purple too long ago. Now _she's _the reason I stay.

She's nearby, he can tell, almost able to trace her path from the sound of screeching bugs and the whoosh of chubby varkids being hoisted into the air. Drawing nearer, buzzing with energy, shouting over the chaos and laughing about it, she's wonderful and music to his ears, pretty enough to hum to. Maya is the reason we're alive, that's for sure, but she's also the reason I'm freezing my nipples off in the damned tundra. I swear this idiot using my hands has something against sweaters, or maybe he just likes having a reason to set himself on fire. Either way I-

"On your left-," Maya's voice cuts through the noise and he stops humming.

I hear it before I see it and swing on an instinct, severing the varkids gullet before it leapt on top of me. The bitch is still alive and _angry, _but that doesn't faze us a bit. He lets out a sick chuckle as the gore streams from the things throat and it thrashes on top of us. As far as he's concerned a blood shower is as good as any and he thinks of letting it bleed to death before its incisors are chomping on his mask, pulling hard enough to wear the straps.

"Gah-that's MY pain pillow!" A swift kick to the abdomen and it shrieks, losing its grip on his mask. The sound bounces in his ears, ripping his face into a twisted grin and spurring him on. From his back he shifts onto broad shoulders and kicks the fat mosquito off, the steel sole of his shoe almost breaking through its sensitive skin.

Its legs kick in the air as it writhes on the ground and even I would laugh. The damn thing is stuck on its back and it's pissed to all hell and he's cackling just thinking about the sound it'll make when he pops its head like a green zit. The chubby varkids shrieks of terror and annoyance goad him on, stroke some sick nerve that makes it hard for him to compose himself in his glee, but ignoring the euphoria of it all he shows a little mercy and caves in its skull with a heavy boot and blows a raspberry for emphasis.

The guts stick to the metal toe of his boot like strings of cheese pulled off a good pizza and he briefly considers the taste before her voice comes into focus again.

"Krieg!"

He turns and sees Maya, jogging towards him, panting and wiping sweat from her brow. There are blood splatters on her combat suit and the sticky residue of mutated varkids making a mess of her hair, but still the sight takes me back a step and I stare at her blood-caked cheeks and drink in her sweaty, messy beauty.

"Whoo," Maya breathed out, resting her hands on her knees before composing herself and turning to him, SMG in one hand while the other brushes hair from her face. She straightened and set me with a look, still obviously high from the action and somehow focused on me, "That was a little close, don't you think?"

Not really, but these chubby bastards can really pack a punch. Maybe more of one if she hadn't told him. I want to tell her we got this, but he's got my tongue.

"Nngh, I can't drown in their weak MEAT sauce-I TRIED!" He says this while yanking the axe back out of the varkids neck, shouting the words over his shoulder as he labors and then admires the congealed gore hanging off it when he pries it free. He grunts and turns back to her, voice low like he's imparting wisdom, "Their tomatoes are too _green_ for this chef."

"Oh really," Maya says absentmindedly, swiping through her digi-map while we grunt over a corpse, "Because back there you didn't seem to notice that _chubby _sneaking up on you-", she cocks her head when she looks at him, a playful side eye, "That is, until I told you."

He mumbles something about it not being easy being green and she shrugs, taking the time to reload her assortment of Maliwan weapons while Axton's voice plays over the comms system. My outer half openly gawks at the pretty colors of the elemental tech, musing under his breath about glow-stick nipple tassels while I second the sentiment, personally thinking Maliwan tech looks like kids water guns, but keeping my mouth shut, knowing full well the bite of their electricity, the memory of being struck by that same gun still fresh.

It's funny to think that the sticky, blue-tattoo snaked hands that he's so obsessed with getting a taste of were the same ones that probably should have killed me a few weeks ago. Life is funny that way and I think about it constantly, even more when we're alone.

Maya motions for us to get a move on, having listened to Axton's instructions while we zoned out and drooled over digits, and we set out along one of the pot-holed pavements that count for a road on Pandora."You've been daydreaming again."

Her eyes are ahead of us when she says it but he jerks his head in her direction to listen and she meets our eye. "It's a little bit obvious. Bugs aren't doing it for you, huh?"

The accuracy of this nearly surprises me, but it's nothing new. After being stuck with me for so long Maya could read the outward me better than the others, knew his habits and his urges and sometimes parsed my meaning through his drivel. Hell, sometimes she even made sense of things I couldn't, or conjured up something that made sense regardless.

She could probably feel the tension seeping off of his twitching hands, unsatisfied with bugs and cold. He wanted something hot with vocal cords he could pluck, he wants to play her a string concerto with someone's neck, he wanted to kill something with a face and a pulse and he wanted heat that didn't exist in the tundra. Sometimes all this pent up want results in a spectacle of self mutilation and psychotic grunting, but it's worse when we're at odds.

He starts most of it really, screaming at nothing, trying to kill every bipedal with a pulse, _setting us on fire._ I'm the punching bag in a pinch but the jokes on him because I can't feel a thing and he's the one with bruises. Too bad pain gets him off.

Somehow she has the patience to give a damn and she seems intrigued by our back and forth, able to scrounge up a rapport with a maniac while I bite my nails off in agonizing embarrassment at everything I say. And worst of all she seems to have come to the conclusion that its external, all this noise, like all this crazy is just a craving, a need to kill like a rabid animal, a quota of quashed skulls to be checked off a mental score like a sadist's shopping list, and I feel a little alone for the assumption. I'm shaking the sides of the grocery cart he's pushing me around in and she's more concerned about finding the meat aisle.

He puts a finger under his chin like he's deep in thought and mumbles a response as we walk. "Hm, can't forget ground beef for the bolognaise…" Our brows wiggle when we turn and look at her and he smiles behind the mask, she seems to sense our light mood and throws a smile our way before gunshots up ahead ruin the moment.

Gunshots.

He almost sets off running towards the noise but the glow of her tattoos flaring with power at our side keeps his mind on track, keeps him in line as Maya tenses and he bends down, hunching and clutching the axe before following after her, sprinting towards the uproar. They duck around a boulder and she motions for him to be quiet but they both hear it, some poor souls being torn apart by jumbo pests and some rushing in like idiot bandits do, guns blazing against hungry incisors. Axtons voice comes through again and even with the hum of anticipation wracking our skull I can understand the words 'hold fire'.

But that's not fair.

Turret-humper wants us to stay out of sight and let the bugs do the work but there's no fun in that, no meat or heat or pleasure in waiting while those greedy parasites eat through fresh spaghetti organs and over season his meal!

Maya hears the smack of our lips as we shake from anticipation and pulls her attention away from the scene. The twitch under our eye was a giveaway and I swear I see her flinch, giving us the once over before trying to say something, maybe calm us or maybe encourage us, I won't ever know because before she can say anything a meaty finger that I no longer own touches her lips, silencing her.

I'm mortified hunched over her like this, drooling and touching_ her _like a sick freak but she knows what's got our blood up, she knows why my body's hot and it's not her, it's the three course blood feast beyond the rock that's just waiting for his carving knife.

He thinks he's a chef in the archway of a kitchen and he's dragging us both to hell to get the perfect meal, no ifs ands or buts. He shushes her and she allows it, too shocked to respond in the moment it takes for him to make a kissing noise against the inside of the mask, letting his finger boop her nose. If she didn't love us we'd be dead but given the look we're receiving we might be anyway.

She fumes and deflates and he leans in close to her ear and breathes, "Bon Appetit," with a breathy laugh before ducking around her, giddy from the touch but _itching_ to get his axe in on the filet mignon while her angry blue magic turns up the heat, oven roasting a nomad midair before we can sink serrated pseudo-teeth into the poor bastards arm and whet a bloody appetite.


	2. Chapter 2: Burning Mercy

Chapter 2: The doctor is in

Plasma bullets, those were new. Refined eridium plasma blasts blurred past my skull in a rush and I wish I could go one day without seeing purple. Just how the bandit got his hands on E-Tech I'd never know, but damn did he knew how to use it. Violet bullets pepper the ground of the ramshackle camp and we scatter like rats, the six of us taking cover behind metal crates and fallen nomads shields.

We were here to settle something for our own merciful butcher Zed, find a gun and gut some nomad, but I'd been on edge since the word 'doctor' and was still having trouble even looking at the guy, a name like 'Mercy' or not. My axe was up ahead, thrown haphazardly and stupidly in the panic and lodged in the skull of a psycho at Doc Mercy's feet, buzz saw still whirring in the grey matter.

_Damn it_. I was naked without it for all I cared and all I'd brought besides that was the Tinderbox, a firearm smaller than my hand we'd kept as a joke. _Not laughing about burnt sausage now, are we? _He smacks his knee in frustration and mumbles something about making a Jimmy Dean's breakfast massacre before reluctantly drawing our joke of a pistol.

If the Doc cared about his allies he didn't show it, cackling from his spot above the battle and unloading another clip into the back of an unlucky marauder that splattered to the ground between our crates. Across from me Gaige's eyes bulge from the shock of it thudding to the ground and she jumps.

_She should be used to this_, I think; shaking my head trying to get a good grip on a pea-shooter, wondering why my meat mitts are so stupidly big if not for bloody axes.

Still crouched and reloading her rifle Gaige lets out a string of panicked curses while her pigtails are clipped by bullets. Her colorful swearing is almost muted under the hum of action but we still chuckle, test-aiming down the sights of our own gun before vaulting out of cover and into the fight, laughing all the way.

"Say hello to the missus!" I heard the clunking of metal and the hose of bullets to my right, the commando's laughter scuttling over it all, cozy behind his turret. I could tell him about the suicide psycho on his ass but that would take time and lung space and instead we rush ahead, snatching a psycho axe off a corpse as we go and headed straight for the doctor.

"I _love _you!" The fuse runs out on the sui-psychos dynamite and I cup my ear mid sprint to hear Axton's dumb ass hyperventilating before the blast.

I rush into the fray and let the axe do the talking; the sweet rush of the voices in silence as the blood flies, reveling in the roar of battle and screeching with joy.

"GIMME A SMILE, PASTY CAKES!" There's a crack and whirr as we bury our toy in a bandit's mouth and I wonder if my teeth are that white_. _The little meat chunk howls with half a face and it's a bad trip to the dentist, anesthesia not included. We tear away and give a good bash, molars and grey matter splattering on the borrowed axe.

"Get it DT!" Gaige shouts and her kill-hogging trashcan hovers past in full swing, spraying my side with gore as it met a nomad and gutted it mid–air. Maya runs alongside it, a short-lived smirk on her lips that vanishes as she's splashed. She's prettiest in red and it spurs me on, whistling as she passes and hollering in her wake.

"Come on out BOYS!" Mercy's baritone resounds ahead and it only takes a second before more creeps pour out of the ramshackle buildings and the chaos starts fresh and I lurch past them, eager to light up the doctor's medical blue smock with burning red.

Fiery blasts from my pistol bounce off Mercy's regalia like blood on ice and I almost chuck the useless bandit tech at his fat head, opting instead to jam the barrel under a bandits jaw and light his head up like a jack o lantern just to feel the fire on my skin. Tossing the body aside and riding the high as the flames lick up my arm I slash through the fodder and try to keep the flames going. Fire's a Band-Aid and here I was in front of the doctor after all, ready to tear off the bandage and show him my wound, wrap my crispy paws around my own surgical tool and start cutting.

Charred bandits screech and crimple beside me and the high has my senses dull because I spin on a heel and meet the business-end of Mercy's gun, blasting me into a daze and shattering my shield in a bright second. I'm knocked off my feet and back onto my sorry ass but all for the better because I land in puddle of brain matter and reconnect with my pointy friend. "It's time for a _DIRTY_ lobotomy!"

I yank the badass nomad down to my level by his coat and he bends at the knee as I sink my trusty rusty friend into his shoulder and give him a sweet taste of iron.

"HOPE YOU'VE HAD YOUR SHOTS." I parrot Zed in a breathy growl and struggle to gain purchase on the doctor as he struggles and levels his bastard gun at my exposed chest. _Oops._

He doesn't pull the trigger before Maya makes a lucky entrance, electricity pistol out she all but leaps on top of the good doctor, combat boots sinking into his gut and springing her upwards. Pandora's gravity will forever be a mystery and with a jump and she's in the air above him, blasting Mercy's shield to smithereens before rolling to the ground behind him.

"GAHH, SIREN _BITCH_-," The Doc croaked out the word and I spit, yanking the axe from his shoulder and tossing him behind me, down metal steps into the arms (or claws) of Gaiges floating Frankenstein.

"AWW HELL" were Mercy's last words. Digistruct claws shine with an electric glare in the sunset and the doctor can't scream without a gullet. Dropping to his knees he sputters and hisses before a blue of a different shade catches his eye.

"Thanks for the gun." Maya cocks the pistol at Mercy's forehead, a glint of fire and delight melting in her steel eyes before the gun goes bang and all I think is '_Burn me baby.'_

_-_-POV break_

The bastard dropped cold and DT digistructs away as pixels trail into Gaige's metallic fist."Seriously? It's over? Lame." The kid strode up the steps with bouncing pigtails and gave Mercy a little nudge. "Hey! Be better next time."

Maya giggled, "He can't hear you with a bullet between his ears."

"Whatever." Gaige retrieved the plasma gun and turned it over in her hands, aiming through the sights and firing at the rakk circling overhead. It didn't faze them but the purple was undeniably pretty against the blushing sunset. The others gathered at the peak, meandering around bodies and snatching up the spoils as Krieg sat and smoldered in a pool of blood, looking comfortable.

"Pssht, weak sauce." Gaige tossed the E-Tech over her shoulder and it landed in a black-gloved four fingered palm.

"Hmmmm," The assassin inspected the rifle with scrutiny, flashing a curious question mark over his mask. "Interesting tech, a bit too flashy for me, more your style, Ax."

Axtons voice was gruff and tired, "Give it here." His backside was blackened and Krieg giggled from his spot on the floor, watching the others play pass the kill-stick and chuckling at the commando's burnt ass. Ax's face lit up when he got the gun in his hands,"Ooh," he looked up at Zer0 with an eager smile, "It's Dahl tech."

Gaige and Axton started to bicker over gun brands and even though Krieg had a say firmly in Torgue's corner on account of _explosions_ he kept his mouth shut and stood up, dusting his ass off, tuning out their banter and looking to the valley from the dead doctor's old vantage point. The guy had a good view. Skags receded to their dens with the coming night, and the last bit of sunlight sliced across his one-eyed vision. He raised a hand and averted his eyes downward, Mercy's jacket catching his attention, the clean crisp white under the gaudy blue smock starting to seep red with blood.

He crouched and fingered the fabric, unsure of his commitment to undressing a dead man.

Maya sighed and kept quiet as Gaige and Axton debated the quality of Dahl and the need for galactic military at large. All the concepts were foreign or unimportant to her and she just wanted to get the quest done with and out of her log. She was a completionist after all and they were wasting daylight.

"If these idiots could bicker anymore…" she murmured, her thoughts straying from the scene as she paused to enjoy the dying sunset over the semi-frozen plains. Maya mused that a planet with two suns should have more daylight but was interrupted by the sounds of a struggle behind her. She turned to see Krieg, fumbling on the ground, desperately trying to get Mercy's jacket over his massive shoulders.

_This was a bad idea. We're gonna fall off the overlook at this rate and then the jacket won't even be clean. _Krieg grunted and protested outwardly, irritated and disappointed and not ready to admit defeat before a soft voice interrupted his thoughts.

"Uh, want some help?" Krieg got the jacket down just enough to see Maya crouched in between his splayed out legs, elbows on her knees, smiling at him."You know, it would help if you _unbuttoned it _first."

_Oh yeah…_"Hnnng! The flesh sweater is a size to small for THIS GRINCH!"

He wriggled further and Maya covered her smile, "Oh stop it, come here."

"-And furthermore, who says we even _need_ a government?" Gaiges voice cracked in the delivery but that didn't stop her, as if anything could stop a righteous eighteen year old with an opinion. The heated argument continued in the background as Zer0 and Sal played rakk-paper-scissors to split the last shotgun and made snide comments about the moment between their comrades, Ax and Gaige screaming and Maya trying to get a jacket to fit the distorted body of a jumbo psycho.

"Oh, um, lemme think, THE UNIVERSE?" Axton shot back authoritatively, "Gaige, unless you wanna end up like the savages on Vulcan 8 you better check your tone."

"Yeah like you know you, you middle-aged turret-humper!" Gaige crossed her arms and turned away from Axton in a huff, facing the overlook.

"Grandpa-fucker." Axton spat back as a convincing closing statement, pausing to stroke his turret, "Shh, its ok," he whispered, patting the metal "she doesn't mean it." Gaige giggled behind him.

"OK sorry if it's wrong to love your turret but that one was a joke and-"

"I'm not laughing at _you_, doofus. Look." Gaige patted his shoulder and he turned.

Kriegs head popped out of the jackets collar and he looked down at himself in awe as Maya tried to pat out the wrinkles, snickering at the tears around the biceps, unable to be contained.

"HA! THE DOCTOR IS IN!" He twirled around, laughing triumphantly and maybe too much, "AND HE'S READY FOR DATE NIGHT." The comment made Mayas cheeks red and she snorted a laugh into the back of her hand. Krieg looked ready to pick the siren up and spin her around but a voice interrupted, cracking through all of their echoes simultaneously and drawing them back to the task at hand.

Zeds ambling accent came through loud and clear, "If I'm gonna treat people shot by E-tech, imma' need way more wounds to practice on. Now that cha got that there E-tech gun, why doncha' test it on the local bandits?" Axton's face lit up like a kid with a shiny new toy and he was the first to respond.

"Yes sir! Ha-ha!" He practically skipped down the steps with the E-tech in his hands; the others following him while Kriegs excited hands were still frozen poised over Mayas hips, caught in the moment and suddenly embarrassed looking down at her.

"C'mon big guy," Maya sighed, brushing off her excitement as she retreated and tugged his hand, leading him down the stairs and after the others. "We don't want to be late for, uh, you know," She licked her lips and threw a look over her shoulder, cheeks still red, "-_date night_."

Krieg watched the dying sunlight play on the patch of fluffy blue hair at the back of her neck as she went ahead, stuck in his tracks and unable to tell if she really winked at him or if he imagined it.

"Hnnngggg," He groped his chest, "There's a fire in me." _And I don't think it's the jacket either…_Something sharp was poking out from the fabric and Krieg pawed further, surprised to feel a burning lump in the right chest pocket, metallic and sharp. _Or maybe it is?_

Slowly he fished out the little gift and the gun practically fit in his palm, but somehow it was prettier than his dumpy Tinderbox, eye-catching. An incendiary pistol with a little squiggly painted on the side.

_That's an "infinity" symbol. _

The echo sounded in his pocket and Mayas voice came through, "Krieg!" The siren called his name over the roar of bullets and bandits, hopefully not having gone too far, "Get over here! We're testing the gun and you're missing the fun!"

Jamming the pistol in his belt, Krieg gave a hum of excitement and gurgled laughter, thinking it was a shame that while he never really liked pistols. But he knew someone who did.

He walked unhurriedly and thought of her soft hands and burning eyes, he savored the look on her face when she executed Mercy and tried to burn it into himself for a second, remember it. She burned him up so deep he should be ash by now but somehow this feeling rekindles every time he sees her. He loves nothing more than fire but Maya and fire aren't mutually exclusive and she burns him up just as sweetly.

Kriegs finger traced the infinity outline and he thought about it, the foreverness of the symbol and the fire that she made tingle in his chest. He pointed the gun upwards and pulled the trigger, enjoying the light and warmth of embers falling down, thinking of her and what infinity meant.


	3. Chapter 3:Bloodshot Finger-Painting

**Chapter 3: Bloodshot Finger-Painting**

It was no surprise that two suns could make so much heat. Beating down in waves it seared the pavement and boiled the scum ponds reflected in the sizzling metal of our bandit technical. Skags rolled in the dust, lolling their tongues and watching the rakk bump into each other above, grilled under the heat and probably brain dead from exposure. 

Here we were, bumping around in a rusty death-trap and sweating like midgets on a shield in the middle of The Dust, on a mission to save a man we'd never met from a dam we'd never seen.

_Goddamn, it's hot. _Short term goal: hat. Caps weren't my style and didn't last long when we spent half the day on fire but anything to stop the sun from burning spots on my dome would be appreciated. Maybe we'd snag a bucket helmet off a goliath at the bloodshot dam, rip it off the guys shoulders along with his skull and half his spinal cord. Or maybe our bald head will boil under the heat like an egg on a breakfast platter before we get that far and I'll forget the thought entirely. I outwardly grunt in agreement, "Only the insides of humanity can contain my BRAIN BACON!"

In a pinch we could rip open a skag and shove it over our head but I don't expect our companions to appreciate the smell or save us from the impending heatstroke. The commando deliberately drives us over a bump and I struggle to keep a firm grip on the side where I'm hanging on like a common lunatic. Axton's a smug bastard and he throws us a look in the mirror and hits the gas pedal, maybe payback for letting his ass get blown up in the last fight, or maybe just trying to boot my ass off the car and finally get rid of me. Prick.

Outwardly we don't seem to mind. The rush of wind bites our skin and road kill splatters our pants, we scream with joyful cackles and clang the blunt end of the axe against the bars, yelling for Axton to go faster. We're just too dense to care couldn't give a damn if we tried.

The rest of our group didn't seem as thrilled to knock around in the bed of the vehicle but didn't offer us any complaints, instead berating our driver and whining about losing their breakfasts. Their voices are near mute on our ears, the wind roaring past drowning out their bickering. Maya shouts something, as barely audible as the others, but our ear was keen to pick up the panic in her voice and I spare a glance her way. She was bent over the seat pointing and yelling something, pointing past us, and I realize that in our joy we hadn't been looking at where we were going. Neither had Axton. 

We crash into the Bloodshot gate and I hear my bones crack as I face-plant into the searing metal. There are times when the mask is more than cosmetic and I thank my luck that the metal casing protected the cartilage of our nose from receding into our brain. I taste blood regardless and peel myself from the gate like a flattened cartoon character, landing in the dirt with a thud next to the totaled technical. 

I gargle blood and incoherent words fall from my split tongue, cursing Axton through the concussion, "Ohh your_ liver _will be my hood ornament…"

The soldier's pretty face is stuck in his airbag and from my spot lying on the ground I hear him trying to wriggle free from driver's seat and breathe. Everyone else is either like us on the ground or groaning in the remains of the technical. I feel a twinge of disappointment when Axton pries himself free and asks if everyone's ok, and Gaige answers him with about as much ire as I did.

"WE'RE FINE JUST HONK THE DAMN HORN!" Gaige screeches, dislodging herself from between her teammate's limbs. 

"Ach, fine geez." Ax finds the steering wheel and a shrill defeated honk is intended to alert the bandits of the other side to our presence, as if they didn't already know we were here from the noise and the stream of smoke peeling off what used to be the engine. 

I made an effort to prop myself up in the dust and shook the blood from my ears, feeling something mushy swishing around in my skull and feeling like the world's beefiest snow globe. Even the Bloodshots wouldn't buy our poor attempt at impersonation. We'd have to get a new car and try tomorrow, maybe tie Axton to the hood. 

"Yeah yeah, I'm openin' the damn gate," A marauder voice rang from the other side and I scoff through my mouthful of blood and loose teeth, lifting up the mask to spit the mess on the ground and rising to lean on the wreck. Maya was strung over the side and had vomited up breakfast like she said she would, but otherwise didn't look worse for wear. We share a tired look and I dote, brushing hair from her face and dabbing puke from the corner of her mouth with the pad of our thumb, mumbling about there being more meat-chunks to come. She was either used to us touching her or too sore to care, but she took our hand and let us lift her out of the car as the gate rumbled upwards and nearly took the technical up with it, rising at the order of the bandit on the other side.

Maya leaned on us for a moment and gave herself a pat-down, checking her damage balanced on one leg with a hand firmly around our bicep for support. The mask comes in handy again because it shields our splotchy blush and tense lips, and I'm just thankful that she was too distracted to notice the sweet chill that went up and down our body in the midday heat. If I was allowed to touch her face she was allowed to touch any part of me she wanted, but even then the contact electrocuted us.

She seemed satisfied she hadn't broken anything and steadied on her feet, but her hand lingered in its place. "You know," she says in my direction, watching the gate grind to a halt above us and expose the camp within, "before a riot or a fight, the monks would say prayer. Something for protection, or strength, or...whatever."

I can't tell if this is nervous small talk or just her concussion talking but between her sweaty hand on my skin and her eyes on mine I feel more than flustered and sickeningly romantic, and I want to tell her that she doesn't need divine protection with me around, and that she's the only force I pray to. My tongue fumbles and I can't make the words, but my hands clap together in a mock gesture of praying and I offer her a botched psycho-psalm anyway. "Holy BACON, mother of gore, PREY on us sinners, NOW AND AT THE HOUR OF OUR DEATH!" I let the words hang in silence for a second and look back down at her expectantly. She squints up at us but smiles anyway.

Reluctantly releasing her hold on us Maya shakes her head and finishes the verse with a sigh, "Amen."

The camp came into view, sandy yard reflecting the sun and making it too bright to focus from our spot in the shade of the gate. There were tin roofs the same as any other bandit camp that nearly hissed with heat, waves of it radiating off them hot enough to burn. It was nearing noontime and all was calm as it could be in a stronghold. Psychos wrestled in the dirt like skags in heat and marauders stood watch lazily lounging in the shade of the shacks. Most had stripped their armor, laying about in tank tops and midriff shirts, scarves and masks thrown aside in the sweltering heat. They didn't care that the gate had opened and they didn't think anything of the intrusion because we were all too bent to start fighting. It was unusual and unnerving to see bandits relaxing and it occurred to me that their gate might have quieted them a little, sheltered them. _Made them soft._

A psycho gets one look at my hulking silhouette and buzz axe and jumps up from dirt, pointing and screaming at what he thought was a badass psycho, "MOMMY? IS THAT YOU?"

The bandits jump and swear in a wave that rocks through the camp, taking cover and pulling their masks back on as my newfound meat-son fell over himself sprinting towards me. I hadn't signed up for parenthood but outwardly I welcome him with matched exuberance and an open embrace. Motor oil is no substitute for blood and the slick ooze coats my palms and streaks my wrappings, mixing richly with the rusty stains of our past victims on my outstretched arms.

"It's time for a SPANKING," the psycho leaps at our neck axe-first but we catch the him by the forehead with one fat hand and lift him into the air as the bullets start to fly and the others jump into action around us. Our axe hacks into my sweet boy's neck and we scream together about counting his good-boy points.

I drop my wayward son in the dirt without a neck and carnage carries me forward, bodies dropping and turning the white sand red. In the rush it's easy to confuse friend for foe but after getting chopped, shot at, or _phaselocked _by almost every vault hunter in attendance we've learned from our mistakes and color code the battlefield to reduce the social bruising. When grandpa burps Patrick obeys but our own color scheme works just as well without the snappy sentence, the most important thing to remember was that blue meant 'stop' and camo meant 'maybe continue'.

_Blue also meant healing._

I pause and fall to the ground panting, my hand is empty as I stroke a gash in my side deep enough to reach a hand into, sweat rolling off my brow and something sticky coating the mask, maybe intestines and maybe mine. My good eye scans the field and parses the screams, looking for where our axe ran off to while the dark closes in. Rampaging was riding the line between life and death like a motorcyclist on a high-wire and I kick myself for throwing the axe, still stuck in the nomad guarding the door. My blood addled brain can't decide whether to salt the wound or cauterize it but there's no time to think before I feel something on my back and my head whips around, eyes met with the cool blue hue of shining tattoos.

"Keep shooting," Maya's voice is steady but low, serious, "I've got you."

The infinity pistol warms my hand while her hands tingle my side and it makes my guts churn with dead butterflies and my mouth sputter with excitement, "OH _BLUE_, what're you doing to me?!" Our bullets light up the marauders ankles and cripple them to the ground as we shoot from the dirt and savor the breeze of her breath on our neck and her pounding heartbeat through the blue magic, gasping from the loss of pressure when she pulls away. We protest, loudly. "Hnng, I was enjoying that!"

"ENJOY THIS, SKAG BAIT!" A grenade lands between us, thrown from one of the shacks and counting down. We scoop it up and toss it back without thinking, half hoping it goes off in our hand and laughing while Maya ducks behind us, not expecting our aim to be _this good_ and missing the gore-splosion as we pitch out the sorry marauder with his own firepower.

We roar and cackle, squinting our eye shut as guts splat down and paint our shoulders red, feeling like the artist and the canvas all at once, "OH BABY-JUST CALL ME POLLOCK!" I flick a piece of liver off my tit and turn back towards Maya whose head is cocked, looking clean and confused and a little bit impressed, by the MLB level pitch or by the art reference, who knows. She opens her mouth to say something but we're interrupted by a pointed haiku being yelled at us three meters away.

"Very cute you two, perhaps you could spread the love, help out your teammates?" This was the closest we'd come to hearing Zer0 angry and even then it was more of a simmer than a rage. We both turn to see the skinny assassin ripping through a badass nomad with his sword and clearly frustrated at our low fatality count, :( emoji displayed. I don't feel bad for hogging Mayas attention but realize we've been letting the others get messy while we discuss fine art. _Classy._

Maya let's out an 'oh shit' and rushes in, phaselocking another badass and shooting, making the beefed up bastard easy prey when we run in climbing up his coat and recovering the axe from its place in his shoulder, hanging in the air for the sweet moment that she gives us. I grunt and groan and enjoy the waves of blue magic kissing my chest as I cling and hack into the nomads face, suddenly attuned to my creative side, screaming between swings. "Every good painter paints what he is and I, am, PAIN!"

The magic runs out and we fall to the ground, landing on something soft for a change. I'm breathing hard again and still mumbling about scalpel paint brushes with my thumbs in the dead man's eye sockets before realize that the fight has ended around us and look around, dazed and high from the thrill of making art in the cradle of her powers. Behind our eye colors are burning from the intoxicating mix of blue and red and I taste them both. Maya passes by us and the corpse and our eyes follow her, enjoying the brush of her hand on our shoulder as she goes, the palm coming off red.

We pry our fingers from bloody sockets and holster the axe, following on her heels like a puppy and considering asking her to finger paint with us. She's clean aside from the hand and as we come up to walk at her side she inspects it, crinkling her nose in mild disgust. I almost want to apologize for the mess but I know that would include the word 'nipples', luckily before I can even think the word areola she casually wipes her hand down our washboard abs and smears the red mess there, leaving her small handprint and finger-sized streaks down our chest. She's made modern art across our skin without thinking and it's better than anything I could've made.

I must've looked shocked and dumbfounded because she offers a shrug, "Red's more of your color." I feel blessed to be so casually painted on but wonder how much she'll like me if I never bathe again.


	4. Chapter 4: Pizza Afterglow

"Do vegetables...exist on Pandora?" Maya posed the question genuinely, reaching for her fifth slice of the dwindling mystery-meat lovers pizza and curling back into the plush faux-leather booth, folding the slice before trying to get all of the stray mozzarella in one bite. It was a good thing she'd abandoned counting calories on Athenas, her former diet of rice and kitchari may have been healthy but it was nowhere near as flavorful as anything that Moxxi had put in front of her since arriving in Sanctuary. She watched the grease pool in the cheesy crux with apprehension, wondering just what the price would be for something this good.

The other vault hunters were draped over the booth and table of their corner of Moxxi's with the exception of Zer0, who probably didn't need to eat. They were all solidly burnt out after a day spent in the Caustic Caverns and were unwinding in the pizza-afterglow, glad to be back above ground and breathe in cheap booze rather than toxic waste.

"Do cactuses count?" Gaige answered Maya from her spot on the floor, leaning on her robot and slowly losing screws through the wideset floorboards, fiddling with the metal of her arm after it had nearly been torn off by a thresher. "I've seen plenty of those."

Mayas nose crinkled at the thought of eating something that could electrocute her, but she'd seen stranger things in people's mouths on this planet. The man across from her in particular had eaten several worrying things in her presence this week alone, and for a second she was reminded of the thresher tentacles he had slurped down for lunch and how well those might be sitting. Krieg took up a solid third of the half-circle booth with his shoulder span alone but seemed unbothered by the tight squeeze. The pizza boxes stacked between them shielded his drink from view, an ice cold rakk ale with a comically pink curly straw poking out the glass and up under his mask. Maya finished her slice and indulgently licked her fingers clean, shifting in her seat as Ax and Sal scooted past her to stumble back to their bunks in HQ, the latter yawning 'g'night' as he went.

There's suddenly more room with only two of them sitting and Krieg grunts, moving from his seat hanging off the edge and sliding his drink towards his new spot stretched out over the bench seat. Maya mirrors him and gets more comfortable, nudging the pizza boxes away with a boot and kicking her feet up. Kriegs curly straw is just as effective horizontally and gets stuffed back in its place, but the mask shifts when he does it and Maya gets another brief peak at the man underneath.

If Krieg was aware of the exposure he wasn't bothered by it, blissfully exhausted and humming off-tune to the bouncing buzz of the clubs music while her eyes scanned him, curious. His chin is square and his jaw is sharp, nicks and scars trace the edge and sit below the line of his lower lip. It's full and defined and fumbling around the bright pink plastic, chewing on the straw like everything else he puts in his mouth. Maya tries not to stare but does anyway, hearing the plastic crack and thinking how sharp those teeth might be.

"I FEEL you~," Krieg drawls the words in a low melodic rumble without looking at her and Mayas cheeks heat up, coughing awkwardly at being caught and running a hand through her hair, turning away from him. He flashes a smile and the mask comes back down, clearly more amused than invaded. Krieg sits up proper and gets comfortable, splaying his arms out across the tops of the curved booth seats, drink in hand.

Maya cleared her throat and motioned vaguely at the ale, saying anything just to brush off her slight blush, "How-how do you drink that?" She's seen Krieg drink nothing but blood and alcohol for the past week and she was surprised she hasn't seen him wasted yet, knowing that booze on Pandora was safer than the water but 10x the strength of anything legal on any civilized planet.

Her psycho friend gave her an incredulous look as if to say 'how don't you?' and held his drink mock-daintily with his pinky in the air, "MMMmmm it takes more than puny pain-piss to marinate my temples, gotta get real NUMB if I wanna be juicy for the grill."

It was about as good of a response as she'd ever gotten out of him and Maya ruminates on the concept, fingering the rim of her lychee martini, wondering just how much more numb her friend could get. She noticed that he'd scooted closer, and in her effort to find a spot on the seat where the springs weren't poking her she had done the same. There were only inches of fabric between them and her head rested against the cushion under his elbow, blue fuzzy locks tickling his inner arm.

The pair enjoyed the moment comfortably unbothered by their proximity to one another and didn't realize the problem until they both reached for the last slice of congealed pizza and gracelessly bumped digits. Maya was faster and had her fingertips on the crust but Kriegs hand covered hers easily and it wasn't expecting deterrence, folding firmly over hers and covering her soft blue marks with his bloodstained palm.

As if the contact doesn't jolt her enough Maya felt a new wave of shock as Krieg yanked her hand to his mouth. He couldn't see with the mask pulled up to eat and didn't realize his mistake before his lips touched her skin, expecting pizza, and four of her fingers slipped into his mouth.

Krieg froze and Maya sucked air in through her teeth. Neither knew what to do and one of them was glowing neon in the others mouth. Mayas tattoos lit up when she was excited and she usually reveled in it but this was the one time she really wished they'd calm down.

He pulled her fingers from between his lips slowly and almost reverently and she got the answer to her unspoken question, feeling sharp canines drag against her skin without breaking it and shuddering at the contact, confused and feeling goosebumps. Krieg overturned her wet hand in his palm, earnest in his confusion over what the hell he just put in his mouth until realization struck him.

"I ordered extra kosher BACON, not finger-food!" Mayas fingers were probably the cleanest things he'd put in his mouth in a month and that wasn't the issue, the issue was her wide eyed shock locking him down and the beet red color her face was turning. She was too stunned to move and couldn't decide how to react, a deer in the headlights with her glowing hand still gripped in his palm and no idea how to talk her way out of a social situation like this.

"'Finger-food'? What the hell are you two talking about-" Gaige popped her head up from the floor at Kriegs exclamation and two in the booth froze, still hand-in-hand and still glowing and Gaige seemed to understand the situation faster and more clearly than they did. Her eyes got starry for a second and realization dawned, giving them the kind of look that you would give your teachers after catching them sneaking kisses in the school hallway, surprised that they were allowed to do that and feeling let in on a secret. "Ohhh…." Her fingers drummed on the edge of the table and she smiled mischievously in an awful teenager way, "I see what's going on."

"No," Maya made an effort to pull her hand away from Kriegs and keep her voice steady, pointing an authoritative finger at the girl, "No. No you don't. It was an accident."

"What was?" Gaige asked through a widening grin and Maya suddenly realized that the mechromancer hadn't seen her fingers in the psycho's mouth and breathed a small sigh of relief, not prepared to explain how that happened without exploding. Unfortunately it was Gaiges specialty to jump to conclusions for laughs and especially wrong ones and she decided to fill in the blanks, "Did I, interrupt something?"

Krieg piped up while Maya sputtered trying to speak without screaming, "I SUCKLED at the teet of blue hatred and tasted the knuckle of fire and they exploded in my hand with bouquets of blooming red!" Maya whirled back on him and mouthed 'not helping!' with a hand clenched around his wrist, trying to shake some common sense into him before Gaige latched onto whatever was happening and made it into a running joke. The girl had seen Axton kiss his turret once and it'd become a recurring joke to call him 'turret-humper' so Maya really didn't want to imagine what kind of moniker this would produce.

"Ooooh, 'bouquets of blooming red', what a poet." Gaige was having too much fun with this one. Luckily she rose from the floor and shut up before Maya combust into flames, "I think I'll leave you two be, don't want to ruin the mood." She wiggled her eyebrows on the word 'mood' and snatched the last slice of mystery-meat lovers pizza from the box in front of them, turning and walking out of Moxxi's with a bounce and a hum and leaving as the victor of pizza-finger debacle.

Maya stared straight ahead at the now empty box and steamed in her seat, thinking about how all of this happened just because she'd wanted a sixth slice of pizza and considering how fast it'd kill her if she leapt of the edge of Sanctuary to escape ever looking at Gaige or Krieg again. The latter was inevitable though, because her hand was still clinging to his wrist.

She quickly let go but her hand didn't stray far, letting it lay flat on the wooden table next to his still clenched fist and staring at their hands to avoid eye-contact. Her tattoos were normal again and she thought that maybe if his hands weren't so ridiculously huge he wouldn't have scooped hers up so easily. Maya compared them in the awkward silence, his broken and scraped knuckles against her soft and branded skin. She couldn't avoid him forever and definitely not now and Maya sucked air, eye-contact or not, "Krieg I-"

"I'M SORRY." Krieg interrupted her and nearly slammed his forehead into the table, bowing it low when he apologized and startling Maya with how fast he spoke, "I didn't try to taste your boiling blue GUTS and and I'M SORRY for igniting your pretty pasty cheeks - I just wanted to fill my guts with meaty miserable mystery and I TOOK IT BLINDLY. SORRY."

Maya was taken aback at the apology and closed her mouth, forgetting whatever she was about to say and letting his words sink in. His eye was closed when he shouted them at her but it cracked open now, looking up at her from his place with his head on the table. Maya realized from the new angle that his whole face and neck was red. She'd never seen Krieg blush or express any indicator of shame or inhibition and it was shocking, but a little bit comforting.

They were alone in the booth without drinks or pizza or annoying teenagers and Maya heard the club music again, buzzing over the sound system and echoing normalcy back into the situation. Something calm settled between them and her blush faded a bit, eyes averting from his and looking back down at their hands next to each other on the table, conscious of how close they were still sitting even with plenty of room on each side of the booth but unable to move away.

"I-um," She wasn't thinking. She couldn't. Her hand lifted and hovered over his for a moment, tentative and gauging his reaction before gently resting over his closed fist. "I...accept your apology," Kriegs hand opened and Maya refused to guess what kind of look she was getting from him, letting her fingers brush inside his calloused palm and settle into the cup of his hand, breathing out the words, "Thank you."

Krieg lifted his head from the table slowly and she watched him carefully rise from the corner of her vision, gentle as if trying not to scare her off. Maya found the nerve to look at him but he'd been transfixed by the gesture, staring wide-eyed at their intertwined hands and completely still. His thumb twitches and his fingers bent to touch her, cup her hand in his and marvel at the disparity in size between them. His digits cast a shadow in the dim light of Moxxi's but the scene isn't dark for long, blue light slowly trickling back down her arm and into his palm, casting soft light on Maya's face and Kriegs mask as they watched.

Neither of them knew what to say again but this time the silence was sweet instead of suffocating and they both wanted to enjoy it for as long as it would last, confusing and new and accidentally good.

Maya relaxed her head against the psychos shoulder, watching her own neon glow cast shadows as it undulated under her skin, a purple-ish blue aurora that existed in the palms of their hands and only for them to see. Krieg was rapt in awe, unmoving aside from breathing, somehow still afraid that it was all about to end. But it didn't.

Her fingers traced the lines of his palm in a circle and she spoke into the muscle of his shoulder, blue lips brushing his skin. "You know…" Her voice trailed off and Maya tried to decide just what to say to make the moment last a little longer, or maybe hours longer, alone with him and their private lightshow and without any more distractions, "...we could just get another pizza."


	5. Chapter 5: Keep Warm pt 1

Keep Warm Pt 1:

The Fridge was the worst shithole on Pandora as far as Maya was concerned, and that was saying a lot. It was cold and dirty and dank to the point of revulsion and just the thought of stepping one toe past its heavy gate made her stomach turn. It was the desecrated corpse of a Dahl outpost and it had taken up demented new residents since the company bailed, turning the place into a crooked hamster cage full of feces and cannibalism that was unmatched in the badlands. It had been a mistake to take this mission but the only other option was gutting the Hyperion Friendship Gulag with the others, something which Krieg denied point blank. He'd nearly blacked out from slamming his head into the wall at HQ, repeatedly screaming 'no' when it had been suggested, so Maya decided to bite the bullet and keep him from freezing to death alone.

_Now we can freeze to death togethe_r, Maya added dismally, mostly joking. Mostly.

She watched Krieg struggle with the frozen hatch from a reasonable distance and briefly considered begging him to go kill things somewhere,_ anywhere _else instead. The thought was interrupted as he gave up tugging and melted the hatch with incendiary rounds, nearly breaking the thing in the process and definitely denting it, but sadly it twisted open with ease and Mayas hopes of escaping were shattered. Krieg turned back to her and shook his axe victoriously as the gate groaned open and Maya tried her best not to look disappointed, nodding with fabricated approval at his efforts. _No turning back now._

He hovered at the threshold and Maya joined him, snickering at the comically deep bow that he offered as she passed and trying to look on the bright side_. _She had him.

Having a badass psycho at her side was a strange comfort but she was ready to cling to it to settle her mind, rationalizing that there was a pecking order among psychos and by similar standards Rats. She snuck a look in his direction, sizing him up. Even hunched over Krieg was a leaning tower of meat with broad shoulders and tree-trunk arms, pushing six feet tall and taller still when he straightened, towering over his psycho cousins with ease. In his massive hands he clutched a custom axe longer and girthier than her_ arm_ and swung it like it weighed nothing, but most importantly he only swung where he had to. He was intelligent above all else and Maya couldn't deny the feeling of deep understanding that he reflected back to her when she spoke to him, something that had solidified her confidence in him from the start. She was deep in thought as they walked into doom and frozen Rat shit, passing flaming barrels and nodding to herself, deciding that on the pyramid of psycho superiority, Krieg was definitely at the top.

Maya was satisfied with her logic and her eyes flicked from his pecs back to his face, surprised that his gaze was already on her. Maybe he was sizing her up in turn, or maybe he just liked her smile. She'd caught him staring at her plenty of times, but this might've been the first time he'd caught her sneaking looks. Maya had done it before, sure, but this was the first time that her eyes had lingered for as long as they had, having spent a solid minute languidly snaking her gaze up and down his formidable bulk and critically analyzing his battle potential. At least, that's what Maya told herself she was doing.

She opened her mouth indignantly ready to deny she'd been staring but swallowed the words when a sheet of metal scratched on the ice ahead and there was movement, the clamor of filthy claws on concrete and a seeping choir of hideous giggles that echoed off the cavern walls. Maya decided that she'd defend her ogling later and drew her smg, ready for the bent freaks as long as he was.

Rats scuttled into view on all fours, low to the ground and crouched in their own filth, and Maya decided that they were definitely on the bottom of the crazy power-pyramid and far removed from her friend. She opened fire and ignited their wrappings, thinking it would be best to burn them alive and sanitize the area with flames. Their screams were cathartic in a pest-extermination kind of way and she figured that the fewer rats left alive the better, taking the time to double-tap each half-melted corpse with her pistol before running to catch up with Krieg. She weaved around bodies and leapt into the groove of combat, firing at the hip and dropping rats at close range as they scrambled and dove around her, dodging the swipe of their grotesque claws and trying to keep pace with her friend.

"Hnng, time to go INSANE!" Kriegs right arm crunched and twisted and he convulsed, badass psycho out and vault-hunter gone, one gigantic arm leading the carnage that the siren followed.

For once she wished he didn't rush into battle, wished that he would stay close to her, if not to _help her_ than only to have someone else to be freaked out with, as if that was a feeling that Krieg could empathize with. For a man of his size he was quick on his feet and even faster in the frenzy of combat. It pulled him forward, lit up his nerves red-electric with the buzz of bloodshed and emboldened him, washed over him in a heady wave and drowned out his senses.

Maya took it all in stride and made a mental note to get payback on him for ditching her, snapping the last mutated Rats head back with a bullet and slowing to a canter. Krieg leapt over an icy cliff after his buzz axe and vanished from her sight, a R.O.U.S following close on his heel and foaming at the mouth. Maya's breath came out ragged and foggy as she released it, panting from the exertion and feeling sweat prickle on her skin in the freezing air. She didn't waltz into cold hell with him just to be left in the dust and she let the irritation bubble as she walked through the slick gore he'd left as his trail, leisurely listening to the Rats screams of terror below and for a second too burnt out to still be on edge. Maya savored the fleeting moment of calm and deftly reloaded her smg and rifle, reaching to do the same for her Two Fer Maggie-

-which wasn't there.

Time stopped and snowy air rushed around her ankles. The Jakobs pistol wasn't in its holster and that was_ impossible_, Maya thought, panicked and patting down her pockets only to be reassured of its disappearance. She could have screamed. "Those slimy _thieving_ Rat bastards-" She swiveled on her heel fully prepared to shuffle through corpses to find her favorite legendary but halted at the sound of a familiar gunshot past the frozen drop below. Her feet nearly slipped off the edge of the cliffside but she balanced, glaring down to the scene below through her rifles sight and seething with rage.

POV break_

Rats would be easier to kill if they didn't squirm so much, but that was half the fun. Krieg could barely keep his grip on the sniveling psychopath, fingers firmly embedded in its intestines and trying in vain to see if he remembered how to make a Jacobs Ladder. Sure his hands were bigger than the average eagle-scout but the idiot controlling them just grunted and assured himself that it'd be an A for effort and he'd get the badge anyway. A bandit would have been dead from the blood loss or the pain but Rats were warped like he was, all dulled nerves and ridiculous pain tolerance and -as Krieg was discovering- surprising flexibility.

The R.O.U.S twisted in a last ditch effort to wriggle free and Kriegs hands fumbled. "Stop _wiggling_ or I'll make a TENT out of your ribcage!" A section of large intestine burst open in his grasp with a spray of purple guts and cut both the man's life and the knot lesson short. Purple covered his chest and he whined at the color, "GAH! I wanted to see red, RED!" Krieg withdrew disappointed, arms covered in violet streaks and oozing bite marks. He cocked his head curiously at the Rat as it wilted into the ice with a final hiss of death, surprised there was still air in its lungs after he had yanked them out through its sternum. His axe was next to the corpse laying in ice and he retrieved it after wiping it off there, adding fresh gore to the violet stain of Rat guts. _God that's unnerving_. Purple had no business being inside anyone and it ruined the rampage afterglow, making his insides twitch and reminding Krieg why he was in the Fridge in the first place and not destroying the Gulag with the others.

The others minus Maya. She'd agreed to keep him company and he was surprised by her willingness, remembering how vocally she'd made her distaste for the place known in the past. Krieg had a sneaking suspicion to why she gave a damn about him, why she cared whether or not he became a nipply ice sculpture, but didn't trust himself to believe it. He just hoped it was empathy and not pity that motivated her. Maybe he'd been a little dramatic back at HQ but even as controlled as he'd become since meeting her, nothing could drag him back to the Gulag unless it tore off all his limbs first. Crush be damned.

She stuck in his mind and he realized that there was an unusual lack of incinerated Rats around him. In his rush he'd jumped over a cliff without thinking and had landed wrestling with the oversized Rat, the rest of it a blur but still clear that he'd left her behind. Krieg felt a twinge of loneliness without her at his side and wondered how she was doing up there, speculations cut short by twin-bullets perforating his shoulder from behind, knocking him face-first and back into his own mess. He knew that noise and it wasn't just any pistol, it was the Maggie and it was hers. _Well damn, she finally turned on me… _He knew she'd be mad at him for running off but not_ this _mad. Through the mask he whined and blew bloody bubbles from his spot lodged in a ribcage and rose with dread, not ready to see Maya angry at him and kicking himself for being so inconsiderate.

It wasn't the siren that'd shot him after all but as Krieg turned and got a good look at the Loot Goon Goliath gunning him down he felt like maybe her anger would be preferable. At least Maya was pretty when she yelled. The twin gunshots that had shattered his collar bone came from a Wee Rat perched on the fat Goliaths shoulders, a strange symbiosis reminiscent of Midge-Mong but on steroids, 10x more dangerous and leveling a pilfered legendary Jakobs at his skull. Three guns fired at him at once and Krieg tripped over his own feet running, strafing to the side and wondering just where the hell that siren had gone and how pissed she was going to be that something as vile as a Rat was fondling her favorite firearm.

A bullet from nowhere snapped the Goliath's head forward and the bucket-helmet flew off, nearly taking the Wee Rat shrieking with it and throwing the towering badass into a headless rampage, Dahl chest crashing down off his shoulders and breaking the ground where it landed. The crash of metal on ice rang through the field and a wave of scuttling claws answered in response, Rats pouring from crevices in the walls and garbage and cackling, converging on the badass. A smoking rifle barrel was perched above on the overlook and Maya reloaded with a huff, looking about as enraged as the Goliath from where Krieg was standing and glowing fiery neon against the blue ice.

_Damn, did she shoot his helmet off on purpose? _He didn't have time to consider it while the Rats closed in, a lone psycho against a hoard of freaks and one fat bastard without a neck, barreling towards him with only his fists and boiling blood. Rats leapt onto the Goliath as he ran and sunk their teeth in, hanging on and coming along for the ride as he raged.

_Get out of there, now! _A dead man spoke in his ear but Krieg roared with glee instead, rushing to meet the badass in the middle with his axe in one hand and explosives in the other, ignoring his better instinct and drooling, itching to taste the sweet loot inside the fat man's gut and screaming all the way, "Someone delivered a FEAST!"

POV Break_

She hadn't intended to knock the Goliaths helmet clean off and was aiming for the Wee Rat, but all the better that she did, gleaning a little satisfaction from Kriegs double-take. Maya let out a smug '_Ha_' seeing Krieg jump at the sight of the badass, almost satisfying enough to calm her fury at losing her pistol. She knew he'd be fine -probably elated- to kill a Goliath anyway but still felt a little sore for him running off, figuring that he could make it up to her by retrieving her Maggie, that is, if it didn't blow his head off in the process.

The siren stayed put with her rifle while chaos ensued below, taking pot shots at the little pistol thief as its ride zeroed-in on Krieg, unable to get a clear shot in the fray of scrambling Rats and blood. From her rifle sights her friend seemed small, puny in comparison to a jumbo pissed Goliath but psychotically on the offense, taunting the badass with manic screaming and rushing at him with lit dynamite in his fist. It never ceased to amaze her how reckless he could be but this was pushing it.

Krieg's joy culminated when he practically catapulted into the Goliaths arms, grabbing its exposed spinal column in the same hand as the dynamite and stuffing the lit sticks down the hole of its former neck. He was laughing loud enough to be heard from her distance and Maya winced as he bellowed 'BOOM!' only a second before the blast.

She shielded her eyes when the fuse ran out but whipped her head back to the scene, the smoke cloud left behind rendering her blind to what was happening below. A sniper rifle wasn't going to be enough she realized, watching the swarm of rats rushing into the cloud and knowing that she needed to get in there. Maya switched to her smg and slid down the iced slope, outstretching an arm to freeze the Goliath where it stood poised over Kriegs prone body, looking ready to tear him in two before being heaved into the air. The Wee Rat had been thrown from its shoulders by the detonation and Maya saw it yank its head out of a patch of ice beyond the fight. Its hands were empty. Maya found her anger again, screaming in frustration.

"Oh come on, where the hell is my gun?" Maya shouted the question at no one and her phaselock smoldered in the air, engulfing the Goliath in flames that roared and burned hot with her rage. Maya added gasoline to the fire with her smg, soaking her victim in slag and giving the crowd of bent freaks a taste before switching back to her incendiary Maliwan. The Rats were mesmerized by the fire and threw themselves at her orb, burning their faces off trying to clamp their salivating maws around meat from the Goliath as it cooked in her power. Their mindlessness only spurred Maya on, overwhelmed by disgust and gagging at the cannibalism. Krieg shook himself off and limped back to her side before her phaselock ran dry and dropped the half-eaten badass onto a bed of incinerated Rat corpses. The bastard was somehow still alive with bones jutting out of its limbs, pulling Rats off like leeches and popping their skulls like grapes in his palms.

Kriegs hand fell on her shoulder and she pulled her eyes away from the horror, confused as his hands trailed down her arm and covered her hand, pointing her gun at his chest with her finger still on the trigger. Maya was still shell shocked and it took her a minute to understand what he wanted before he spoke.

"Gotta keep WARM," he muttered, elemental energy from the barrel slashing his visage in light, "I wanna feel it all, I wanna touch your HEAT, I wanna embrace the flames, Oh god, lemme have a taste of yours!" The Goliath ran out of Rats to smash and turned back to the pair stronger than ever, a God-liath steaming and charred and pissed beyond all hell. Maya wasn't going to argue Kriegs logic in the face of death and did as he said, firing into his chest point-blank and gasping as the flames consumed him.

Hyperions claws bored holes into Kriegs psyche but they'd warped his outsides as much as his innards and somehow made him uniquely fireproof. Maya saw it at the Bloodshot dam when he turned himself into a human pyre and stoked the flame with his own bullets, at one point chugging a stray bottle of mystery liquor and breathing a cone of fire at a Bruiser like it was a carnival trick. Krieg delighted at the burning warmth and let his head hang back and his eyes close, savoring the chaotic ecstasy. He held his axe aloft and presented himself to the Goliath with open arms and a bubbling cackle.

Maya ducked out of the way but Krieg stayed put, readying the axe like a baseball bat and meeting the charging Goliath with a heavy swing to its jugular before being knocked to the ground. The slagged badass was melting on top of him and seared flesh dropped to steam on the ice, melting into pockets of gore. Krieg allowed his head to be smashed into the ground in its grasp, giggles pouring out of him like a hyena and seeming to enjoy the head wound as much the smell of burning skin. "Hurt me more, MORE! I want to bathe in your agony!" Maya had to turn away from him when he jammed his fist into the Goliaths dripping eye sockets and reached into what must've been the things _brain_, something bright catching her eyes and buried under the stray limbs of a Rat. She rushed to the corpse pile and tossed limbs over her shoulder, leaving Krieg to burn.

Maggie was in her hands again, filthy and sticky but Maya didn't care, turning back to her psycho as he was pulped against the concrete and hollering over his laughter.

"Goliath!" What was left of the badasses head swung over its shoulder, barely any meat still clinging to the skull and tongue hanging free without a jaw. Maya wrapped her finger around the trigger and righteously leveled Maggie, ready for the explosion of gore and smug in her impending victory, "Meet David."

POV_

_Montys wife don't take no guff._

The Goliaths head splattered against his mask and Krieg was quick to pull his legs up and out from under it before its muscles gave out and its corpse collapsed into a bloody puddle. Flames petered out around him and he panted, shaking and dizzy and seeing double from the head trauma. He let his skull rest against the cracked ice and concrete and bathed in the growing pool of red, content to lay there until the blood congealed like pudding around him before a familiar pair of combat boots padded through the muck, stopping at his side.

He stared up at her, his bloodied angel of holy fire, and her image swayed and distorted. Krieg hoped it wasn't his own fool heart tricking him again, just imagining that she cared and imagining the teasing smile lighting up her features. Maya shook her head at his sprawl, reloading her recovered pistol and almost cooing at it, and Krieg wished she was that happy to see him. _Just tell her. Tell her you need her; tell her you won't leave ever again. Tell her to fill you with love and tell her you'll do the same. Do it before she runs and promise to love her, forever-_

"Fill me with bullets…" Krieg breathed the wrong words from the ground, reaching a hand to brush his fingers over the toe of her shoe and grab her attention. "Fill me with sweetfire and make it blue, burn me up inside until I'm a husk for the grave and we can lie together-" He panted from the exertion and Maya bent at the knee to hover over his crumpled body, Maggie holstered firmly at her hip. She met his hand with her own and lifted it off the ground, inspecting the damage and only half-listening to the words, hoping that his head wound wasn't dire. Krieg needed her to listen to him and he needed to get the words out, puke them from his lungs so they couldn't drown him, and kiss them into her skin so she could keep them. "I need it, I need this pain _so bad, _I need-" _Say it. Say it and rip it out of me. _"_I need you_."

Mayas head jerked back and her mouth opened in shock at his voice, puzzled eyes searching his and wondering what the hell just happened. His voice had dropped low and into a new cadence, a tone that was tame and level but urgent. It was like the voice of another man and Maya paused, knowing this was one of the rare moments she clung to, the moments where his lucidity overshadowed his crazed rambling or bloodied hands and his eyes stared back at her from the abyss, pleading with her, _understanding her_. "I…"

"I need you too." She whispered the words to him and they kissed his ears, almost lost under the whirl of wind that swept her hair forward, tendrils of blue tickling the respirator on Kriegs mask. He brushed them back behind her ear, hand gentle and deliberate, eye still on hers. Maya was stunned but laughed softly at the absurdity of it all, reminded that she was supposed to hate where she was, surrounded by cannibalized bodies and kneeling in a pool of blood. But it couldn't be wrong to savor this moment, hold tight to the fleeting instance of understanding blooming between them. Maya wanted to make something clear while he was listening, speaking emphatically and clutching his hand.

"Please, don't do that again. Stay with me. Don't run off without me, not here, not-" She wanted to say 'ever' but thought that might be pushing it, biting down on her lower lip and letting her eyes drift from his to take in the carnage around them, and feeling her hatred for the Fridge swell with the sight. Maya exhaled, spent. "-not here."

Krieg took the opportunity to scoot closer, finding that her lap was much more comfortable than concrete and laying his head down there. "Mmmm _oh Blue_," The fear in her voice made something warm and painful burn in his chest and he wanted to always be there with her, wanted to scream the words a million times. Krieg tried to slow his beating heart, answering, promising her what she wanted and dying to say so much more. "-I won't run from you." _Ever._


	6. Chapter 6: Keep Warm pt 2

Authors Note: Reposting this because the first go around was full of errors.

Summary: Krieg and Maya loot a chest. Maya touches meat-muscles.

Goliaths blood still flowed from the corpse at the vault hunters side, oozing around them and pooling around the prone psycho on the ground. They were both caught up in their tender moment, one still reeling from a concussion, and didn't seem to mind the mess. Maya snapped out of it and turned away from him when she felt something wet seeping into the fabric of her pants from the ground. She wrinkled her nose lifting herself up and out of the puddle; pants stained deep rusty red and thoroughly soaked. Blood, she'd discovered, wasn't that hard to get out of clothes if you knew what you were doing, but even then she knew her pants might be a lost cause. She tucked the thought away for later and extended a hand down to help her friend.

Krieg took her lead and pulled himself up, shaking his head and squeezing his eye shut, trying to walk off the first blunt trauma of the night and taking it in stride. Maya kept close with her hand tucked into his, hovering at his side in case he stumbled. He straightened and she turned away, giving his hand a squeeze before letting it drop. Krieg cracked his neck and stretched, joints popping one by one in a sickeningly satisfying wave. He rotated a sore arm in its socket and tidied himself up, re-adjusting the straps on his mask and feeling his pant pocket for his comb, habitually brushing it over his bald head.

Krieg finished and mumbled something about being the second prettiest, bloodiest glow stick, waiting patiently next to Maya as she examined the Dahl chest the Goliath had dropped. It'd abandoned the thing before the fight and sadly it hadn't landed nicely, looking like a crushed soda can on one end and flipped over on the wrong side. Maya considered the chest critically with a hand on her chin, pacing around it. There was really only one option. "We're gonna need to lift it."

Krieg stared at her from the other side, cocking his head curiously and flicking an eye up and down her crossed arms. Maya had biceps of steel and siren strength to back them up, and she wasn't about to let him try to lift this on his own. Badass psycho or not, he wasn't going to be much use to her if he tore his arms off. He seemed ready to protest but shrugged, holstering the axe and bending at the knee, ready. "Lemme see those bulging _murder-muscles,_ sweetmeats."

Maya shook her head and laughed at the nickname, crouching to mirror him and getting a grip on the underside of the chest. "Oh I'll show _you _muscles, meathead. On three-"

She counted to three and they heaved together. Maya stood firm and gritted her teeth against the strain, digging her heels into the packed snow and grunting. Krieg had an easier time of it and Maya felt him taking more of the weight, thinking how nice it was to have a human forklift as a friend. Their efforts paid off and Maya jumped back as the chest was flipped over, flinching from the sound it made when it hit the concrete a second time. She slowly opened her eyes and was surprised not to hear a ruckus stirring, glad to see that the Rats in the area had been cleared away earlier.

_And to the victors go the spoils,_ she thought, joining Krieg on the opposite side, "Pound it." She held out her fist and he bumped it with his, reflecting the wiggle of her fingers and simultaneously going 'boom'.

Maya rocked back and forth on her heels excitedly as the Dahl chest yielded with a 'swoosh', knowing damn well that Goliaths always stashed the good stuff. She wasn't disappointed. Krieg spoke and she gasped, both blown away by the spray of loot within. He purred with satisfaction and whispered the words into her ear. "_Sunset colors..."_

Their starry eyes reflected the purple and orange in the chest, a ripe metal sunset bountiful and glowing and all for them. They shared a stunned look, faces lit up like vault hunters on Mercenary Day, and Maya dug in. Krieg was relieved she couldn't see his dopey grin as he watched her, but he couldn't help it. He loved how giddy she looked with a new gun and her tattoos glowed bright, adding her splash of blue to the warm colors against their skin. She hesitated before expectedly snagging the closest smg, turning it over in her hands. They were her favorite and he knew, but it was still cute how excited she'd get over a new one.

Krieg turned back to the loot and matched her enthusiasm, pocketing a purple Jakob's hand cannon before reaching for a rare and shining Maliwan shotgun. His eyes nearly bulged out of his head once he realized what it was, the Maliwan Vitriolic Plague in all its corrosive glory, red letters on the side reading the legendaries calling card phrase, '_Bring out your Dead'. _Krieg nearly spit and shot his hand out to grab it, only to meet the sirens grasp on the weapons shell and have it grabbed back between them.

_We really need to stop doing this, _the voice echoed in his head, looking down at their joined hands wrapped around _his _shotgun. Krieg gave a weak tug, meeting resistance. He wasn't quick to give this one up and was unsure how to tell her that without being lit on fire.

Maya squinted up at him and gave her own tug in response, eyes flicking between him and the gun, apparently just as conflicted as he was and twice as stubborn. "I uh, I have a thing for Maliwan. And acid damage. So like..." She yanked again. He didn't budge.

"And I like my treasure like I like my baby-steaks, _raaaare_..." Krieg retorted, giving his own tug. Inwardly he wanted to cave but on the outside he was dead-set and locked in place, listening to the rush of frantic suggestions being whispered in his ear, a whiny noise like a buzzing fly. The sirens poor attempt at persuasion was deaf to him. _Ok, so shotguns might be our thing but stop being a baby, drop it, give it to her, apologize, offer her the pistol, stop staring, do something, say something-! _Krieg shook the thoughts out and snapped back to reality, overwhelmed and still undecided. Luckily something on her shoulder caught his eye and he leaned in to get a better look at the Torgue assault rifle hanging from its strap.

His free hand pointed at it. "Nnng - I wanna see explosions of RED. You can keep the pungent green and gorey grime but only-" Maya glanced at the Rifle, and then back to him. He smiled under the mask and felt good about the bargain, "_\- if you wanna trade."_

"Deal."

POV SHIFT … … … … … … … POV SHIFT

They swapped weapons and both got what they wanted. Krieg held the KerBlaster like a newborn, running a finger down the metal casing reverently and beaming. It was a decent long range weapon and he was in dire need of those, especially if he was going to stay close to the siren the whole time they were in the Fridge. The other weapons were divided evenly and once the chest had been picked clean Maya sat down on its edge, swapping her gear and comparing stats on her digiscreen.

She swiped through the options and quickly finished but kept the blue screen displayed in front of her, pretending to be paying attention to it and watching Krieg from the corner of her eye. He was still busy and Maya could have sworn she saw the veins in his neck popping as he growled at the screen and mumbled numbers to himself. His back was to her and she was sure that he wouldn't catch her peeking, but she kept her wits up and turned back to her echo whenever he moved.

Her eyes flicked back and she trailed them down his shoulders, frowning at the oozing Rat bites that marked his body. Usually his wounds healed easy, but Maya saw that it wasn't blood but something _purple _bubbling from the festering bite. She closed the screen and got to her feet, sneaking up behind him and inspecting the cuts while he remained absorbed by simple math.

The bite mark was inflamed and red, oozing purple goop and pus. Rat teeth poked out in several places where they'd been lost in the battle, embedded in the festering skin. Her concern deepened. Maya studied the wound, more intrigued than disgusted, and reached out her gloved hand to prod the surrounding area, only to see more of the liquid seep forth from the bite. "Huh. Gross."

Krieg jumped when she touched him and grunted in surprise, whipping around to face the siren with a shocked expression. Maya put her hands up in front of her, "Just me, don't worry. You're hurt." He relaxed but fixed her with a dry look that seemed to ask '_When am I not? _'

"Turn back around. Let me see it." Krieg obeyed, turning and allowing her eyes to travel his body freely, enjoying it more than he let on. She wasn't reckless enough to touch the wounds themselves but he felt her fingers examine the area around them, running the fingertips down his skin and prodding, trying to see how deep his damage was and how inflamed the area had become. It must've been bad, he figured, seeing as she lingered there touching him slowly, methodically. The hands of a healer at work. Or maybe just wanted to touch him.

_Stop that, _Krieg shook his head, suppressing a shudder and feeling a pang of heartache, _Can we go one hour without falling for her? Stop jumping to conclusions and be a good patient._

He moaned and rubbed his chest, trying to massage away the feelings burning holes in his heart and not having much luck. "Ugh, oh doc, can't you just_ rip it out _…"

"Rip what out?" Maya asked, coming back around to face him, "Are you hurt here too? What hurts?" She brushed his hand away and laid hers on the spot. It was on his left breast, over his heart, and her concern turned to worry, not seeing a wound anywhere and suddenly unsure of how far the infection might have spread. Was it in his blood? Was it hurting his heart? "We should sit you down."

"Blue…" Krieg protested weakly but Maya ignored him, leading him to the Dahl chest and sitting him down in the snow next to it, positioning herself on the edge to get a better vantage point and going to work on the bites on his back. She pulled out her med kit and focused healing waves of magic in her palm. Rubbing alcohol tingled on his back and Krieg sucked air in, tense and cold and thankful that alcohol couldn't freeze.

The cold vanished as Mayas magic hit his skin in waves, feeling like warm water and seeping heat back into his muscles. Krieg melted, tension chased away by her sweet touch and muscles loosened by the heat. He didn't realize he was moaning until it was too late, but if Maya heard she didn't care. She was absorbed in her work, and worst of all, actually concerned that he might be hurt.

_Tell her we're gonna be fine. Tell her we're used to being eaten alive. _"I'm a three layer beef cake, baby," He moaned, eye rolling back in his head, "-it'll take more than a few hungry _rodents _to take a slice out of this bakery boy…" Maya took into account his dismissal but was still set on what she was doing, yanking Rat teeth out of him and tossing them aside into the empty chest. There was a pile of them.

"_ Very _hungry rodents, I'd say..." She muttered, extracting an incisor the size of her finger and examining it briefly before adding it to the others. Aside from the bites Krieg was looking fine, Maya realized, and was reminded that she set him on fire earlier. The thought stopped her in her tracks and she pulled back from him. Her eyes scanned him for burns but found none, not even a blister. Weird.

"Hey, I wanted to ask since we have a minute," Maya started, leaning to speak in his ear and get his attention before returning to her work, "How do you do that?" She motioned vaguely with her hand, really trying to say 'how the fuck are you alive' without being rude, "-that thing with the fire. Like, how are you not a psycho flambe right now?" He stilled and thought, and Maya wondered if even_ he _knew.

"What _are _you?"

POV SHIFT … … … … … … … POV SHIFT

_'What are you?' _Kriegs shoulders dropped when she said it and now he bristled at her touch, newly aware of the situation. She was removing human teeth from his infected pus filled wounds and he was sitting there enjoying it like a happy idiot, thinking it was_romantic _. He was fooling himself with delusions of Maya wanting to touch him, denying reason like some psychotic lovesick animal. He shook his head, knowing exactly what he was. _Just answer the stupid question._

"I'm made of fire." He offered dryly, voice flat and irate, answering her in a mocking tone. "I snort kerosene for breakfast and I eat coal for lunch. I piss gasoline and I keep lit matches in my underwear. Wanna see?" He glanced over his shoulder at the siren and she averted her eyes. She removed her hands from his back and he sighed. _Oh great. Now we both feel like shit._

"Sorry." Maya apologized, speaking the words into his back. "I didn't mean it that way, but I went too far with that one." Krieg wanted to pick his axe back up and slam the blunt end into his temples. _Why are you such an idiot? How many smacks until we black out so she can leave us here? _A warm hand between his shoulder blades pulled him back to reality and he turned back to her again. Maya gave him a strained smile and looked back down to where she was touching, continuing her work. She was silent for a moment. "...forgive me?"

_We don't deserve this. We don't deserve her._

He nodded in response, resting a hand over the toe of her shoe and giving it a gentle squeeze, an affirmation that she'd been forgiven since his tongue was too stupid to say it. Maya breathed out in relief and Krieg smiled, tilting his head back and staring at the pile of teeth filling the chest. He needed to find a way to answer her original question without being an asshole.

"I…" He started and stopped, not sure how to word his true feelings about fire. He wanted to say that Hyperion slagged him until he stopped caring and he lit himself on fire for fun, but it wasn't backed up by any memories and was more of something he just told himself to feel better. Krieg switched gears, trying to conjure up the 'why' rather than the 'how' drumming his hands on the edge of the chest, lost in thought.

Maya flicked the last tooth towards the pile and let her powers do the rest, massaging the white light into his muscles and moving down from his shoulders. While they talked and looted darkness fell in the cragged Fridge and Maya looked towards the sky, only partly visible from where they were sitting, a cracked dome of ice acting as a ceiling in most parts. There were some stars, and moonlight shining from Elpis bathed the area a cool blue.

"Hnnnng, I lied! I'm not _really _made of fire," Krieg spoke up and Maya was pulled away from the sky, cocking her head at his obvious statement. He seemed genuine in his delivery and she couldn't tell if he was joking again or not. "-but I wanna be."

"You...want to be made of fire?" Maya repeated, unsure of how that explained anything.

"YES!" Krieg nodded vigorously, turning towards her triumphant and confident in his answer. "Because fire is life and life is _pain_," he got closer, as if telling a secret even though he was shouting, "-burning seething pain that fills us up and spills out our screaming_sockets- _the blood, the screaming, the _teeth _-" He motioned wildly to the pile, smacking his chest for emphasis as he shouted, "they will NEVER, _ever _end, BUT they'll burn away and be swallowed by fire, all of them, into a burning pyre to putrid humanity!"

"And we," Krieg took a knee and placed a hand over his heart, knelt down before her, "-you and I, we will BE fire, inside and out! A saccharine _smoldering _SYMPHONY alone in the stars and we, will be, ETERNAL! "

He panted and stared up into her face with crazed eyes, still on his knee before her and speaking his truth, screaming it and declaring it and begging to be understood. No confession he made would matter when Pandora burned and it didn't matter now either, but he waited for an answer anyway.

The siren was stunned to silence looking down at him but somehow put her hands on his shoulders, trying to get a grip on him before he got ahead of himself and lit himself on fire to prove his point. Krieg accepted the gesture and put his hands over hers in turn, not really knowing what she meant but accepting the gesture as being something good. His heart was still pounding from the screaming or her hands or maybe just her eyes on his and he moved Mayas hand to feel it, pressing her hand to his heart and grinning.

"_There _! That's where my fire _burns. _Feel it, feel the burning, melting goodness! Know by what SMOLDER and with what _art_ you twist the sinews of my _heart_." Maya did feel something. She felt his heart pounding and felt his whole body throwing heat like a furnace, and something told her it wasn't the infection. She felt something click in her mind, understanding how he worked in a way, how he operated day to day and constantly burned himself without dying. He wasn't just fireproof he was fire _prone,_ hot from the inside out and burning to get it out instead of in.

"Oh…" Maya breathed, understanding him through his prose and hoping she wasn't jumping to conclusions for the sake of a crush. She looked down at her hand, the gloved right hand that lay over his breast, and marveled as it soaked up his heat through her armor. Something wasn't right about that, feeling him through the glove. She wanted to feel him completely- with nothing in between them.

Krieg looked visibly disappointed when she withdrew her hand from its place above his heart. He wondered what he did or said wrong and felt stupid for grabbing it in the first place, kicking himself and ready to pull away-

-before her left hand took its place.

It was _freezing _from clinging to the frozen metal of the Dahl chest and Krieg shivered, as much from the cold as from the skin-to-skin contact. Blue tattoos glowed hot and vibrant with undulating blue lights, and her healing magic shone through, pressed firmly over his heart and warming him, soothing him. It was her own fire, bubbling out from her skin and washing over him. Maya might even be his favorite fire, he thought, feeling the blue flames light up his heart and knowing it was true. She cleared her throat and he looked up from her tattoos, realizing that they'd gotten closer again.

"I, uh," Maya composed herself and smiled down at him, confessing a secret of her own with her hand over his heart. "I like fire too, you know. _Especially _yours."


	7. Chapter 7: Keep Warm pt 3

**Authors Note: Thanks for all the kind words and support for this fic! This is the third and final part of the Keep Warm story but it's not the end of the fic itself, just the last hurdle of a three-parter to set the rest of the story up. Thanks again, feel free to hit me up on tumblr nishakadam to keep up with my psyren art and fics. Next chapter out in a week or two. Love.**

Fires were easy to start in the Fridge, despite the lack of flammable tinder. Most burned away in trash cans fed by garbage and the limbs, blood baked into their metal like grease on a pan and growing thicker with each body. Maya studied the contents as she and Krieg passed through the winding halls, peeking past the metal rims only jerk back and swallow the urge to vomit at the smell of bubbling rib cages within. She covered her nose and shook her head, breathing through the fabric of her sleeve and gagging. Up ahead Krieg stopped and glanced back at her, waiting, listening to the noise in the vents up above and grinding his teeth.

They were below the ice, deeper into the underground facility. Hissing pipes trailed the walls, bent and twisted as the residents. Rats scrambled in the vents and Krieg jerked his head upwards when they passed, shaking his axe in the air and beckoning them down with grunted promises of broken necks and sweet, sucking chest wounds. The walls all looked the same down there and Krieg felt the metal grates closing in, suffocating him. He was trapped again in snaking cement hallways, mad men all around him, and it was all too familiar, too raw. His skin crawled and he scratched at his arms, trying to claw himself out of his own body and escape the memories seeping in from the cracks in the concrete and crazed giggling above.

_Just a little bit longer. _Maya told him to stay close and he was determined to obey, suppressing his itching desire to run away screaming. If he could bolt, he would find a scalp to flay, slip his fingernails under someone else's skin and bury his thumbs in their eye sockets, bore a hole inside a corpse and hide there until the terror passed. _Don't run off. We can do this. Probably._

Krieg hands wrung the axe and he wondered just where the hell all the Rats were when he needed them, scanning the length of the metal vents down to a crevice in the wall. He was waiting for something to crawl out and rush him, bear their teeth so he could smash them in. He wanted to reach down a gizzard and pull out lungs so he could scream into them, use them like pink pillows, screech therapy at its finest and just what he needed. Nothing came from the hole in the wall. Krieg hummed through gritted teeth to keep from exploding, walking towards it and running the axe across the stone, trying to draw the sniveling psychopaths out with the noise of metal on rock. Maya composed herself, coming to stand behind him curiously while he seethed and mumbled, observing the area as he had done.

As far as she was concerned the guts of the old Dahl base were almost as shit as the Fridge around it, the only saving grace being the shelter from the cold wind. All and all it was the pest infested belly of a broken rotting carcass already picked clean, if anything there could be called 'clean', and Maya had a hard time believing they were going to find anything but cannibals and abandoned nests. Or what Maya thought were nests, judging by the heaps of what used to be mattresses, dank and decaying and curiously stained. The thought had crossed her mind as to what Rats could want with a bed, or how anyone could sleep somewhere so foul, but the idea that came to her was even more graphic than trash can rib cages and she shot it down before it had a chance to exist. _Nasty._

"Ohhh, I just _love_ to wait for my meals..." Krieg growled low, crouching and peering into the icy crevice with desperate eyes, dying for an answer or a scream from within and inwardly glad his shoulder span barred him from attempting to reach inside. Maya moved ahead and passed him, silhouette playing on the cement walls above, a prowling shadow against the firelight. Krieg looked up from his frustration and turned, following her.

"Meals?" She looked back over her shoulder with a playful smirk, "You better not be talking about the Rats. You put _one _of those things in your mouth and you're not getting any more kisses from me. Ever." Maya reached out to boop the blue lipstick stain she'd left on his respirator, tapping it as they walked together. "Mask or no mask."

She made a good point, but Krieg didn't have the heart to admit that he'd eaten far worse. Instead he just giggled stupidly at her touch, blushing a deeper red than the rusted metal garbage cans. Maya had a blurring effect on his vision, and he felt his brain stop convulsing over metal guts or crushing walls, focusing on her and her blue lips and trying to block out the rest. Her hand pointed at the kiss she had left on his mask, a touch that pulled him away from his brooding and made him floaty.

"Mmm I'd never EVER trade a _pulsing_ prime rib dinner for dessert, _but just for you_..." He reached for her hand, removing it from his mask and holding it to swing between them as they went. "-for more sweet, silky SMOOCHES, as long as they're _blue_."

"Oh wow, I think that one actually rhymed." Maya kept her free hand on Plague and tried to focus on watching ahead, but Kriegs new display of affection was distracting, especially when he held her hand in his and rattled off impromptu verses at her.

She'd heard him speak that way before, fluidly with tempo and alliteration, but all his poems usually involved meat or gore. Only when they were together he would slip into a more...tame version of his prose. Switch from reds to blues, scream her name in between sonnets and swap the word 'gore' for 'glow'. She liked that. She liked the way he thought and the way his mind wove words around his meaning, sometimes garbled but sometimes profound. Usually messy.

They came to a stop at a doorway of sorts, a metal arch and a threshold that led deeper into the dimly lit Rat hole.

"Were you always such a poet?" Maya asked, leaning closer to him and rubbing circles into the back of his hand with her thumb. She played her fingers on his skin, holding on tight before combat, enjoying the touch on his hand before it was covered in blood. She'd heard other lesser lunatics scream about meat and fluids but they just didn't have his skill, lacked the golden tongue and the vocabulary that he flaunted wildly. "Is it a Psycho thing? Or were you like this before, too?"

_Before my brain went through a meat grinder? _The voice echoed in his ears sardonically. Something bubbled from his cortex and tickled his spine, someone inside him trying to piece together an image from a life that wasn't his, stealing his headspace. Krieg dropped his eyes from hers and stared down at their hands, scraping his skull for answers while she waited patiently and feeling detached from the contact, fighting the waves crashing against his forehead.

Memories didn't come easily. Half of them were just flashes, littering his brain like overexposed photographs and covered by piles of painful recollections that obscured them. His mind clung to horror and discarded the rest, dwelling on sterile tables and dripping scalpels, a woman's screams that ran parallel to his own gargled wailing. All memories of the years before were lost, like precious home-movies with slasher films recorded over them.

"_I can't remember_…" Krieg chewed the words and squeezed his eye shut. His head jerked to the side, grumbling something about cheap film budgets under his breath but trying to focus on an image connected to the word 'poet', fighting for it and telling himself it was real as much as he wanted to tell her.

The feeling of a pencil that fit in his hand. A horribly cluttered desk that he propped his elbows up on, hunched over a splayed out book with blurred, melting words, covered in yellow highlights and sharp underlines and circular brown stains. Scribbled hearts in the margins that weren't anatomical, just symbolic. Crumpled papers around him and a ring in a box, golden and bright and a _mistake he could only make once_. The thought vanished as soon as it came and Krieg gasped as it was lost, a blinding light exploded behind his eyes. His axe bashed into his temple, blunt end striking repeatedly, and he reeled back to slam it down another time before a strong grip trapped his wrist, preventing it from landing the next blow. The pencil and book were gone. The ring was gone. He was yelling.

"-keep the memories DOWN. Keep them down with a knife in its throat, slash it until it bleeds thought juice across the dirt and it's absorbed into _nothingness_..." Maya yanked him down by the wrist and he stumbled forward, hunching over to meet the siren eye to eye but still seeing stars. Her other hand gripped his chin and she leveled his face to hers, trying to bring him back to her. His pupils were dilated wildly and Maya went in and out of focus, speaking to him through the frantic rush of whispers in his ears.

"Krieg? Hey-" The siren had nearly jumped out of her skin when he'd suddenly backpedaled away from her just a moment before his self-mutilation began and she held on tight now, trying to keep the buzz axe away from his head and working against his muscle, the huge hand gripping his weapon trembling with effort. "-snap out of it!"

His axe fell to the cement with a clatter and his hand spasmed, twitching and curling and lost without the weight of it to hold. Krieg dropped his head into his chest and panted, whining low in his throat and trying to cling to the thought that was so bright but now so, so dark. _A ring._ _That was her ring._

"Krieg." His face was still in her hands and she shook him a little, trying to get a response, "Are you okay?"

_Have we ever been?_ "There's a ringing in my _teeth_." Krieg grunted, echoing the voice that screamed and wailed between his ears, a voice that was sobbing over a woman he didn't know and rattling the bones of Kriegs ribcage, making his heart pound. Outwardly he groaned and shook his head, trying to convey just how _not _okay he was.

Maya held his head in her hands and tried to read him. She was relieved he was calm again and no longer making himself bleed in front of her. His tired eyes glanced up, whites red and bloodshot. He reached up to squeeze her hands and sighed, rubbing up against her palms and trying to slow his heart, enjoying the pressure on his face and the cool of her skin. Krieg slipped her left hand under the mask and gave the fingertip a chaste kiss, his weak attempt at reassuring her before he pulled back, straightening.

He let her keep his hand but looked down at his axe on the ground, hating it and needing it and pawing the new wound on his temple. _How are you going to keep kissing her if we're just going to forget- _Krieg growled 'shut up' under his breath, half-inclined to make the hole in his head deeper to mute the worm in his brain, yank it out and smash it against the concrete just to get some peace.

"Hey," Krieg looked back to her and Maya smiled weakly, "You don't have to force it. Not remembering and not...not this." She held up his hand and kissed the back of it, making a point to meet his eyes when she did. _Don't let me forget those stormy eyes. Dear God, don't let me forget this. _"We can take it slow."

"Take it _slow_," Krieg breathed out, parroting her and tingling from her lips on his skin. Whatever '_it'_ was, Krieg knew he didn't want it to end for anything. Not because of the parasitic moral maggot in his medulla and not for broken rings. Not for dead memories and not for all the puny pencils on Pandora. If it meant showers of blue kisses and warm, slow touches painted in her skin he wanted it, and he wasn't going to forget. Memories could evade him all they wanted, for now, as long as he made new ones with her. He mumbled, eyes fixed on the blue smudge, drawling the words without thinking, "-a slow burn, marinate it, broil it, savor the_ flavor_ and scratch the recipe into me..."

He was going to savor her. She was there, she was real. She spoke up at him, "Look, I'm glad to hear whatever you have to say, when it comes. But for now,"

She smirked and pointed across the threshold with her thumb, "For now, let's go _kill _something. Get the creative juices flowing, so to speak?" She wanted to hear more poetry and she didn't want him to bleed for it, preferring that he made something else bleed to achieve his breakthroughs.

"-that is, _among other things_." Maya was trying her best to make him laugh and that did it, a chuckle bubbled from his chest and lightening the mood.

"Oh _yes_," Krieg nearly shivered in anticipation, wondering how she knew just what to say. He snatched the axe off the ground and Maya cocked an eyebrow at his complete one-eighty from tender to bloodthirsty. "Yes, yes yes yes YES."

Maya laughed at him when he pointed forward, motioning with the axe before stepping past the arch, pulling her with him. "Make room for my soliloquy, WILLIAM, it's gonna be a _serenade_."

"Out of the way, Romeo." Maya pushed him playfully and took the lead this time, cocking Plague authoritatively and strolling ahead of him. He was ready to bash heads and write their amour onto the frozen walls and she wasn't going to let him steal all the fun this time.

* * *

Maya opened her mouth and poised herself in front of a jagged spire of ice, reapplying her lipstick in the reflection before smacking her lips together. At the rate they were kissing she was going to be out of her favorite color, electric blue, by the end of the month and that was a problem. She inspected herself, preening and contemplating ordering another tube of lipstick on her echo when they broke for camp. Or maybe three.

Something wiggled in her other hand, trying to free itself while she was lost in thought. The Rats skull was still trapped there and his leg spasmed on the ground, melted from head to waist by her fire and dripping melted skin down onto his wrappings. He was alive, barely, but she forgot him as soon as she'd caught her reflection in the ice, more concerned with her bare lips than the man wheezing death rattles in her grasp. Maya frowned at the dwindling stub of her lipstick.

The last tube had gotten her through four months on Pandora, but she hadn't been losing it at the current rate and just today she'd reapplied three times. It wasn't a long wear formula, but it was vibrant and comfortable and best of all it stained beautifully wherever she touched. Most importantly it stained her friends mask and hands blue and that,_ that _was thrilling.

_Just a friend?_ She echoed. The Rats burning face melted the ice below by proximity and steam rose up from the spot, obscuring her vision while she stood there, pensive. _How often do friends kiss, Maya?_

The Rat jerked his head and tried to scream through his useless mouth, lips melted together into a horrifying stretch of flesh. His teeth poked out in spots and his eyes were bare in his skull, wide and shocked and unable to look away from his own hideous reflection. He shrieked in his throat and Maya shoved his face into the ice without looking away from herself, silencing the noise. _So what if we kissed. It's not like it's wrong. It's just- new. And fun._

She chided herself for worrying, catching a glimpse of the psycho in question, his image behind her reflected in the ice. Krieg was having the time of his life ripping Rats to shreds behind her and raving bits of Dante's Inferno through swings, another sweet attempt to impress her. Maya was content to let him go wild and was more caught up in her own dilemma, trying to decide how much lipstick she needed to order so she could kiss him blue. To kiss her friend. Her very tall, giggly, handsy friend, who was totally not distracting her with verses and bloodshed and gentle looks. Not at all.

"O HUMAN RACE, BORN TO FLY UPWARDS-!"

Krieg shouted and hurled a hulking R.O.U.S across the battlefield. It crashed into her makeshift mirror, cutting her contemplation short and toppling her other victim. Maya rolled her eyes at the sorry creature as it twitched, wishing that the mutated freaks would just _die_ a little easier. She pocketed her lipstick and cocked her gun. Plague blasted the poor bastards into chunks from point blank range, shattering the mirror in the process. Maya shrugged and watched the bodies corrode into a simmering pile of sludge, smacking her lips together one more time before turning back to the fight.

"-wherefore at a little wind DOST THOU SO FALL?" He continued, snatching another Rat by the ankles and mimicking a Hammer Throw, spinning in his place and sending the poor bastard flying with a cheer. Maya nearly lost it as the Rat flew in an arc above her and splatted into the concrete ten meters up, appreciating her friends flare if not his aim.

She slipped into the chaos and made a beeline for the psycho at the epicenter of it all. Maya was dropping Rats and clinging to the trigger of her Hyperion smg, whistling at the accuracy and purring as she mowed down freaks in her path. They were dead before they could crawl from the cracks in the walls, lead filled bodies stacking in place and plugging up the escape routes, trapping the Rats in the confined clearing, trapped between two vault hunters and a hard place.

From a cliff up above a Goliath plummeted down, nearly crushing Krieg in the process and breaking the concrete where it landed. It leveled twin assault rifles at him and Maya flicked her wrist, was pulling him upwards before he could shoot, the gravity of her magic yanking stray Rats up into the crunching sphere to join it. Maya smirked and closed her fist, popping the men within like organ piñatas and splattering her psycho with a shiny new coat of red.

All the better as far as he was concerned, howling with laughter and smearing it on his shoulders like sunblock, "BLOOD DRINK."

Maya backed herself up against him and kept firing, falling into their usual rhythm of slash and slay and glowing bright with energy. There was a ring of fire around them and corpses knelt in the snow like candles on a white cake, melting and screaming and setting surprisingly nice mood lighting in the night.

Krieg tore his axe out of the last Rat and Maya leaned against his back for support, panting and sweating, covered in blood as much as he was. He was blanketed in it and she slipped down his slick skin, nearly falling into the snow at their feet before her caught her by the waist and pulled her upright. She was glad for the help and righted herself, standing up on her own but keeping his huge hand on her hip. They shared a wild look, both high from the combat, breathing hard and pressed up close, smeared corresponding shades of red.

The opportunity was ripe and Maya took it, jumping onto her tiptoes to smack another kiss into his jaw. Krieg gasped and reeled back as if he'd been shot, dropping with an over dramatic thud down to the cold below, making a gruesome snow-angel. She was pulled down with him and she shrieked, smacking him on the chest and laughing at his silliness.

Krieg laid spent in the snow, panting and giggling and mumbling contentedly. He

ran his hand along her back. "'Fall, o angel, into the eternal darkness, into _fire_ and into _ice_'…"

Maya tilted her head at his words, not surprised he could recite verses of an ancient poem but somehow still couldn't order a pizza without help. She splayed in the snow next to him and rested an elbow on his abdomen, leaning on him and over him, opening her echonet. Krieg grunted at the pressure on his belly and lifted himself up to see what she was doing. They had a new habit of resting wherever they fell and he didn't mind, admiring the splay of corpses around them while she poked words into a search bar. She was browsing an online catalogue of makeup and Krieg raised an eyebrow at that, not understanding how that was a pressing matter right this second.

Maya ignored his intrusion and poked in an item number she'd memorized, flicking the through screens. "I think I'm gonna need more lipstick. A lot more."

"Mmmm," Krieg hummed his approval, agreeing completely. He let his head fall back in the snow and ran a hand down his mask, hoping that the kiss there hadn't been washed away by the tidal wave of blood. "A new rainbow of _red on cherry lips_. Blood red,_ blistering_ bites...beautiful..."

"Really? I thought you preferred blue."

He considered it and agreed, nodding his head. She was right, he did like blue. He loved blue. It was her color and it meant everything, it was his sky and stars and the oceans of her eyes, grey and harsh like stormy seas and choppy waves. Blue was her electricity and her thunder, crashing over his head and short circuiting his brain. The fire in his heart was blue and it was wrapped around her pinky finger and up her arm, lighting him from the inside out and burning bright around him. She was blue through and through and God, did he worship her color.

"Krieg," Maya spoke and he grunted in response, eyes closed and head leaned back, trying to force the words out of his head and onto his lips before she took the space. She sighed, turning her question over before speaking and glancing up to the sky above the clearing, glad to see Elpis again and counting the stars. She placed her order for 10 tubes of electric blue and closed the digiscreen. "What are we doing?"

_Dreaming_. "Dying." He said instead, eyes shut and still convinced he was about to wake up.

"Hmm, yes, but that's not what I meant." Maya shifted closer, near his head, and put her elbow in the snow beside it, grabbing his attention and tracing the lipstick stain on his mask. She touched it slowly, choosing her words. "-what are _we_ doing...together? This. What _is _this?" Maya tapped the mask and the kiss, and something clicked in his muddled brain, knowing what she wanted to hear and dying to tell her.

_This is the best thing that's ever happened to me, _he wanted to say. _This is us being idiots. This is me helping you tear down the walls of my brain with our bare hands, it's me handing you a sledgehammer, begging you to smash my heart to pieces. This is you, making me feel human and it's me, making you laugh through the pain. Maybe that's all we need. A scream and a giggle and a fire in the middle. Or maybe we need more lipstick. _

"Mmm it's a good touch. It's heaven and blue cherry pie," He turned his head, opening his eye, "It warms my _guts_ with perfect agony. It sweetens the meat between your ears." Krieg drawled, licking his lips under the mask, eyes on hers and just now noticing just now that she had re-applied her tint. Her nervous lips were vibrant and creamy azure, cracking into a smile as he went on, "It's _good_."

Maya leaned in closer and his heart nearly stopped when her fingers touched the skin of his jaw. She gently ran her touch along the bone, light and fluttery, _petting_ him. Krieg leaned into it, almost purring with delight and humming low in his chest, savoring her softness. Her touch shifted and she snaked her fingers higher, the tips poking under his mask, tracing the scars that dug deep into the meat of his face. A part of him wanted to pull back but he fought to stay close, forcing himself. She wanted to see more of him, and nothing could be more terrifying.

"It _is_ good, isn't it…" Maya was unbearably close and he could feel her warm breath against his throat as she whispered the words, the vein there pulsing wildly while his heart beat out of his chest in anticipation. Maya laid another kiss along his jaw and Krieg nearly exploded, only kept from screaming by her hand on his neck pressing him down into the snow. "It could be better, you know."

_God, do I. _But it couldn't be better. The mask was in his way and wouldn't allow it.

"Hrnng, my face has a face and it's stapled on_ tight_," Krieg spat through his teeth, chewing his lower lip hard enough to break the skin, "Can't crack it, can't break it, can't _tear it off,_ can't..." _Can't kiss you through it._

"Can you move it?"

Maya knew how he felt about this. She knew that he'd rather tear his fingernails off than be bare to the world, even when they were alone. But he could move it. He could move it to scream and to drink and to eat and by God he was going to move it so she could kiss him, so she could finally feel his lips for herself after fixating on them for weeks. She squirmed, wishing he would give her just an inch of leeway so she could get his mouth on her own and off her mind, stain his lips blue and suffocate him to sate her desire.

"...please?"

Her plea broke on his ears and he was resolved. Maya sucked in air as he pulled her closer with an arm around her waist, the other hand fumbling with the the straps behind his head and growling, working fast before his better judgement could stop him. The voice was pleading with him, begging him to stop. _She's going to scream. She's going to run and hide if she sees your mug and we won't be getting anything then-! _The mask was pulled up and it was too late for reasoning.

"GOOD GOD, shut me up!" He was bare from chin to nose and Maya drunk him in, lower half of his face bare for her. She admired his scars and purple pocked skin, meeting the man in the mask with eager eyes. Eager lips.

She wasn't scared at all.

They crashed together and Maya slammed him down into the snow, trapping him underneath her. Her left hand fell on the bare skin of his cheek and he moaned into her mouth, electrified by the glowing skin blessing his face after being stuck in the dark for so long. The kiss was fervent and hot, persistent. She pulled back with his lower lip between hers, sucking it before sinking back into him.

Breathing was the only thing that separated them now and it was stolen in gasps, breaking their contact for seconds before they reunited with a sore lips. They laid in snow and pulled at each other, mouths locked together like skags in the dust. Air became a luxury and Maya felt her head floating without it, unsure if it was the kiss or the asphyxiation and pulling back regardless.

Her lips popped off his mouth where he'd been sucking them and Krieg whined when she drew back, craning his head up to follow her and blindly trying to reach her. Maya took a deep breath in and pushed him back down, needing at minute to inhale before acquiescing to his urgent smooching.

Krieg let himself be pushed down and paused, taking the moment to pant, licking his lips. They were blue. His entire mouth was blue. The skin that he'd exposed to her, his jaw and cheeks and nose, were puckered with azure kisses and smudged lipstick, looking more like bruises against the worn purple scars that covered his right side.

Maya got her bearings and took him in, sated momentarily and trying to get a better look at him before he could hide back behind the mask. She understood why he wore it.

It was no wonder he hated purple so much, she thought, it was part of him. The skin was warped and sunken in, entire swaths of it scarred over purple and dull red. It wasn't as gruesome as she expected it be though, and she could clearly see the structure that laid beneath. Low cheekbones and a sharp jaw, soft lips that curved into a plush pout. All of it was scarred and marked over but it was there, the face behind the face.

His mouth pulled at the corners, feeling her eyes on his skin, and Maya laid a finger on his lower lip, smearing the blue deeper. Krieg was obviously dazed, and he mumbled something she couldn't hear against her fingertip, kissing it.

Maya tapped and teased him, leaning back down to meet his lips and whispering against them.

"See? That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"No…" Krieg moaned back, sinking his lips into her soft blue ocean and losing his words against the waves. _No._ _That was perfect. _


	8. Chapter 8: Giggle

**Authors note: First update in a while. It's a short one. Working on something bigger. Thanks for your patience! Hit me up on my tumblr nishakadam if you want to keep up with more borderlands/psyren content. I appreciate all your love ~**

Fast-travel made Mayas hair stand on end, but it was a necessary evil in order to reach Sanctuary. She once tried to understand how it worked, even listened for hours when Gaige explained it piece by piece, but her discomfort remained steadfast. Truthfully, she doubted its safety every time.

Even so she materialized on the other side, emerging from the bitter cold of the Fridge and stepping into the arid summer heat of the floating city. Maya breathed in air that wasn't rank for the first time in hours and got her balance. She counted her fingers, making sure everything was still with her while Krieg followed through the travel system and landed somewhat less gracefully next to her.

He stumbled forward and shook his head, stray snowflakes falling from his shoulders as he did. Maya gave him a once-over and tried to brush off what remained of the snow on his head, not surprised that it melted off him as soon as they'd arrived. Krieg seemed just as relieved to be out of the cold as she was and he huffed, looking through the archway of the fast-travel pavillion and closing his eyes blissfully, calmed by the sight of the city beyond and it's meandering, non-cannibalistic residents.

The ache of her muscles after a long day tempted Maya to kiss him goodnight and fall into her bunk, but the thought was interrupted by her growling stomach. Rations, if a scavenged Dahl protein-packet counted as such, hadn't been enough to be considered dinner. Maya eyed the clock in the travel pavilion, reading 3:15am. Krieg turned back to her and squinted with concerned at Maya's hands clutching her own stomach. It whined again, loud enough for him to hear from a few feet away. He smiled behind the mask and came to the same conclusion she did, clapping a hand over her shoulder as they exited the concrete hutch and turned down the alley.

"Moxxi's?" Maya proposed, already knowing his answer and walking ahead. Krieg nodded and his hand moved down to hers, holding it gently as they plodded down the stairs and towards the neon lit entrance of their favorite pizza joint. He hadn't eaten anything for hours either and didn't let on that he'd given her the only food he found. She needed it more than he did, he knew, but the hunger was worth it with the promise of triple-cheese, meat-stacked _goodness _just a doorway away.

"Ohhhoho _yes_," He licked his lips, "-the night is young and the MEAT _has been prepared_." The scent of melted cheese and bacon hit him when they neared the archway and Krieg swallowed to keep from drooling, letting Maya lead him by the hand and up the steps, into the bar.

The usual 3am crowd was bent over the counter and the slot machines were dark. Moxxi's music was turned down to a low roar for the sake of the neighbors and the few drunks that remained dozed off with their heads on the wood next to their condensating liquor bottles, water pooling on the bar table. Moxxi ran a cloth along the surface and hummed a tune, turned away from the pair when they entered, cleaning with one hand and clearing clinking bottles with the other.

The unofficially designated vault-hunter booth was tucked away in the corner an arms reach from the jukebox. They made their way over, both eager to splay out on the bench seat and enjoy each other's company while they waited for a well deserved midnight snack. They weren't expecting anyone to be there.

_Looks like someone had fun at the Gulag_, the voice mused, taking in the sight of the other four battered hunters slumped over the table, broken and blood spattered and not entirely conscious. Axtons scalp seemed split open and he held an icepak against the bandages, resting his head in his hand with his eyes shut. Gaige scrolled through her echonet with a zombified stare and Sal had his assault rifle splayed out in pieces, picking through the parts and swapping out rusty metal for shiny Hyperion yellow. Zer0 laid back with a blank screen and an arm around Axton, loosely holding the soldier in place to keep him from falling onto the table. None of them paid any mind when the pair walked up.

"Really, guys?" Maya frowned at the splay of her teammates and sighed. She just wanted to be left alone to eat without being pestered, but that was a rapidly vanishing possibility. More concerning was the lack of _room_ and she briefly considered hauling Axtons broken ass to HQ just to free up a spot. The soldier cracked an eye open and looked up at her, flicking between the siren and her hulking companion as his head swam. He sniffed blood back into his nose and spoke through the new gap in his teeth.

"Oh wow. This concussion must be worse than I thought." His eyes were fuzzy and the whole room swung when he opened them. Axton squinted at Kriegs distorted image, the mans huge hand still clutched in Maya's, but beyond that odd detail something else wasn't right. His colors were off and Axton dreaded to think what the Hyperion engineers metal fist might have done to his vision. "Why is Krieg blue?"

That got everyone's attention. All four heads snapped to attention and Maya felt her cheeks warm as she froze in place. _Oops_. She forgot that she'd left a kiss on his cheek. And his neck. And all over his chest. In all the chaos of escaping the Fridge Krieg didn't bother to clean himself off and didn't see the need to, and now he was smudged blue in more than one spot and red with blush from the neck up. Maya gripped his hand harder and shot him a panicked look, eyes wide and lips sucked in, trying not to scream.

"Oh my GOD," Gaige gasped and her robot arm swung to grip the seat behind her, nearly clocking Sal in the process. "YES."

Maya smacked her free palm into her forehead and groaned.

"I _knew_ it! Hey, pay up!" Gaige shoved Salvadors shoulder and he swore something nasty in Spanish, muttering under his breath while he fished out a fat wad of cash and shoved it at the girl. She held it above her head victoriously with a 'boo-yah' before pointing it back at Krieg and Maya. "I told you they were cozy! A thousand _bucks _worth of cozy."

"_One thousand dollars_?" Zer0 buzzed, displaying a $$$ sign before a :P face, "A meager bet, honestly." The assassin shifted and nudged Axton to get up, standing in front of the booth with the soldier leaning on his shoulder for support. "Lilith owes me big." A 'BYE' in red letters shone in front of his mask and Zer0 hobbled Axton out the door to go collect his wager.

"Flowing BLOOD MONEY for our AMOR, the pizza sauce on a fresh LOVE PIE." Krieg threw his head back, cackling at the absurdity of it all and hollering over Gaiges laughter.

Maya yanked him back towards the bar, ignoring the open space that their friends had left and instead steering away from Gaige's flurry of questions. She ignored them and sat down at the farthest end of the counter with him at her side, pressing a hand to her cheek and trying to extinguish her blush. The psycho put their joined hands on the counter, rubbing circles in her hand while she composed herself and only making it more difficult. He giggled when she glared at him, smiling wide behind the mask.

_They bet on us getting together. _It would be bad if it wasn't hilarious. _Too bad it's hysterical. _Krieg didn't feel half as embarrassed as she did but he tried to come down from the excitement, clearing his throat to keep from giggling, glad she couldn't see the grin that stuck on his face.

Next to him the siren cleared her throat, composing herself. She looked his way and forced a nervous smile, eyes flicking back and forth from the many blue splotches on his mask. He looked ridiculous. And happy.

"You've uh, you've got a little something right here." Maya tapped her cheek and he mirrored her, huge fingers brushing his own cheek and coming back blue. Krieg looked at his blue fingertips and then at her, sitting close to him. She was fighting the giggle that she held in her cheek and that wouldn't do, not for a second.

Her nose was scrunched with exertion, forcing the laughter down. Krieg tilted his head, fixed on it. He wasn't thinking when he reached for it, tapping two fingers against the tip of her nose with a gentle poke.

"Boop."

A blue smudge smeared on her nose and she got a taste of her own sweet medicine. Maya shrunk back, eyes wide, gasping with surprise before the dam broke. Her laughter spilled out and she let it come over her, lilting and bright, a laugh that was puckered with giggle snorts that she didn't try to hide. To Krieg, it was the most _heavenly _noise.


	9. Chapter 9: Opportunity Pt 1

There were times he was happy to go shirtless. Bandits bound themselves up in clothing and rags. Nomads went the extra mile, smothered in full smocks and trench coats. Bruisers had the right idea with tits to the wind at all times, nipple tassels optional and pants worn suggestively low. Psychos of all kinds, however, were exclusively shirtless. It was the best way to be when you were boiling alive.

"Stand still, dammit." Gaige chided Krieg and he jerked his head out of the clouds. She was gripping his leg from where she sat on the metal stoop of the Catch-A-Ride station. Her other hand poised on her drill, bent over the busted machine that he was trying his best to hold in place for her.

Nothing on Pandora ever worked the way you wanted it to, especially jury-rigged car dispensers in the middle of nowhere. Pinning their hopes on technology better of as scrap metal was a bad idea to begin with, despite it being the only one left in the highlands, half torn apart by threshers and barely functional as it may be. The hunk of junk was better off as a footrest, but without a car they were out of options.

Gaige was frantically taping wires with duct tape and prayers, rigging the shell together with a drill and bolts. She was shielded and somewhat cool in the shadow his hulking form provided but Krieg was less than content, exposed and roasting in the midday sun.

Motor oil and sweat smeared on his throat, streaked across in four thick lines. A black hand-print painted the skin where he wiped off sweat, the drops that fell from his chin, from the covered face baking beneath the metal. The mask was a torture device in the heat, clamped onto his brow, over his nose and mouth, respirator working double-time as he sucked in hot air without reprieve.

One hand came up to fidget on the leather straps that bound his useless double face. Kriegs fingers tested the strain, yanking on a strap only to feel it already stretched taut. They were bone dry, cracked, and he pulled at where they cut the reddened skin of his ears. There was no escaping the sunburn blooming on his exposed dome and he growled, jerking his head uselessly and shouting.

"Gah! Boil my brain and pass the butter- I'll be a lobster DINNER at this rate!" His whining earned him a dirty rag in the face from Gaige and he caught it in one greasy mitt. It was filthy but Krieg shrugged, adjusting his grasp on the Catch-A-Ride shell and smacking the rag over his head. It was as good of a hat as he was going to get and it satisfied him, for the moment.

Gaige's cursing was more Pandoran than a bullet in the face and it poured out as she worked, feeding off frustration. It resonated off the pavilion walls, reverberating over the exhausted silence that the hunters stewed in, only interrupted by Kriegs occasional psychotic shouting and the sound of a drill.

Next to them Salvador was flicking bolts at the threshers below the platform and humming a tune. He picked up the stray metal pieces that rolled towards them from where Gaige was fiddling with the busted machine, discarding them the way one would absently eat chips.

Krieg squinted down at the man from where he stood and hoped that the pieces weren't essential, one eye watching the bolts disappear into the dust one by one. Sal snatched another bolt and flicked it away, not even blinking when it was snapped up into a thresher's mouth. They were like coy fish in a dirt pond; the tiny ones still the size of a limb but only half as deadly as the worms that burrow deeper beyond the platform, the same kind that destroyed the last car they'd had. Everything had been peachy before Gaige got roadkill-happy. It made Krieg wonder just whose bright idea it was to let the eighteen-year-old drive. Might've been his.

All six vault hunters sat or splayed out on the metal stoop of the Catch-A-Ride station, cramped in the meager shade offered by the rusted awning above. It swayed and groaned with every hot gust of wind that blew past, the vending machines tilting along with it, straining the thick electrical cords that tethered them to the far wall.

"God, how long is this going to take?" Maya groaned into her palm with a yawn, not expecting an answer.

She wiped the sweat from her brow and closed her book in a huff, defeated. It was too sweltering to even _read _but she'd passed an hour doing so anyway, half out of boredom but mostly out of spite for the temperature. She only had sweat stains to show for it, having absorbed almost nothing from the pages she stained with dirt and clammy hands.

The siren was tucked in a shady corner of the station, laid out on a stack of crates and seated comfortably above the rest. In her peripheral the neon lights of the machines caught her eye, head hanging over the edge and upside down. Her hair dangled and she blew a strand out of the way, watching the vending machines with new interest, only slightly worried about them falling over and more curious as to how, despite there being an abundance of vending machines on Pandora, not a single one had cold drinks.

Even without one Maya would be alright, for the moment. She decided that once they'd made it to their destination of Opportunity she'd snag one there, maybe overturn an entire vending machine, but she could think of someone who might appreciate it more. Someone that was working up a sweat.

Head still hung over the edge of the crates Mayas gaze left the vending machines, trailing over the winding electrical cords and downward, following them to the in-progress Catch-A-Ride machine, and then... to the psycho holding it in place.

Her eyes stopped on his boot, moved up the shredded pant leg that it tucked into, and higher...

_That comb might always be a mystery_, Maya thought, and her eyes fell over the bent plastic comb poking out from Kriegs back pocket. She cocked her head to the side, amused, knowing she'd seen him use it at least once, but to what end on a head like his? Maya flipped onto her stomach for a better view, bringing the book up to her face. Her eyes peaked out over the cover, watching from the shadows of the rusted awning.

Above the comb poking out from his back pocket his back was as bare as it ever was. Skin washed in warm sunlight and shadows cast by sharp angles, sweat glinting off the contour of twisted muscle. She ran her gaze over the slickness of his back, the knotted flesh and the curve of his deltoids, a sheen of sweat on it all. It slid down in rivulets from his shoulders and Krieg stood in the hot sun, hunched over, thick arms gripping either side of the machine that came up to his waist with his hips pressed against the metal.

Maya curled a page between her fingertips. Kriegs weight shifted, still turned away from her, but now he leaned back. His hips were flush against the machine and his back arched, neck and shoulders cracking as he stretched out, rolling the ache from his stiff posture.

Sweat beaded on the nape of his neck and Maya bit her lower lip, rapt, focused on it as it toured down the body she watched intently. It caught the light and fell, languidly slipping between his shoulder blades, down the shadowed small of his back, falling down past the dimples above his-

Krieg felt eyes on him.

His head jerked up and he whipped around. The dirty rag flew from its place when he did, but he wasn't fast enough. Maya deftly yanked the book back in front of her face and all but pressed her nose into it.

She held it in place with determination and Krieg squinted into the shade, looking around, sure that he had felt something, someone, staring. Inwardly he chalked it up to his own twitchy body playing tricks on his head or at worse, the sun finally baking his brain into delusions. He shrugged the feeling off, snatching the rag from where it fell and rubbing it over his head before gripping the machine again.

After a tense moment Maya peaked out over the cover, still blushing and not from the heat. She shouldn't have been staring, leering at her own...psycho, from the shadows, but then, what else was there to do while she waited? Against her better judgment, Maya worried her bottom lip and lowered the book, only to jump when Axton spoke up and Krieg spun to face their way.

"You said it would take a minute, Gaige." His words dripped with exhaustion, lounging in the remains of a worn rubber tire bigger than an armchair. His tone was pleading, "Does the word '_ minute _' mean something different where you're from?"

"Hey," Gaige popped her head up from behind the machine, standing next to the psycho with her drill in hand, menacing it. "Don't blame me, blame Scooter! This thing's shot to hell and back and it's HIS machine, NOT mine!" Gaige punctuated her defense by slamming the drills handle against the metal.

The machine answered back.

It whirred to life and sputtered and the two hunters jumped back as smoke peeled off of one side. The UI screen lit up a cheery blue, the first signs of life since they'd set on fixing it. Scooters pre-recorded voice resounded with his signature Pandoran twang and the vault hunters hollered, cheering at the noise and jumping up from their spots.

"EUREKAAAA!" Their mechromancer roared triumphantly and shook the drill in her fist. She thrust it into the air and tossed the drill as high as she could, digistructing it back into her inventory with a burst of blue pixels, reminiscent of confetti raining down. "Everybody UP! IT'S CAR TIME."

Krieg screamed with joy along with Gaige and hoisted her into the air, tossing her meters high just to catch her again. The oil rag fluttered to the platform when he did, forgotten for a moment before a blue tattooed hand picked it up from the spot. The psycho cackled and set his small friend down in front of the terminal, leaving her to skip away and summon the bandit technical that was going to carry them across the bridge and into Opportunity.

He was itching to dunk his sunburnt head in the water surrounding the city, maybe cannonball in and emerge ax first, covered in seaweed and screaming for blood like the thing from the black lagoons dirty cousin.

The thought reminded him of his hat and he pawed his head, wondering where it fell.

"Looking for this?"

Maya held the cloth between two fingers, nose scrunched in barely concealed distaste. Kriegs shoulders tensed when he spun around to see her there, eye flicking between her face and down to her hand. He raised his own to grasp it but pulled back, not sure whether to apologize or grab it but stuck in the middle with twitching, grasping fingers. Kriegs mouth fumbled and thoughts buzzed in his head but Maya moved past them, through them, and stepped into his space.

She pressed the rag against his throat and Krieg froze in place, feeling the cool of her digits through the fabric. She was gentle, wiping the oil stain from his skin with slow deliberate strokes, dabbing away the mixture of sweat and grease. Her other hand rested on his shoulder, unbothered by the slickness of the skin on her own. The rag ran over his adams apple and it bobbed as Krieg gulped, forcing himself to stay still while his hands curled and twitched at his sides. They relaxed when she pulled back.

"It must be hot under there," She observed, hand on his shoulder and eyes still on his neck. Two gloved fingers pressed into his jaw and tilted his head to the side. Maya ran them under his chin, down the cords of muscle below, tracing down his throat, over his carotid artery where the pulse ran wild and sweat wet the skin of her fingertips. Her eyes met his, "Huh, big guy?"

_You're not making it any easier, _the voice whined. He gulped, licking his dry lips, "It's a slow burn..." _God, her hands feel good, maybe we can…_

One huge hand shook and rose with effort, pressing over Mayas. The siren blinked in surprise, not pulling back, letting him run her hand over his skin. He leaned into it with his good eye shut and hummed with approval. She felt it his throat, and he sucked in air to speak. He was interrupted by an annoyed sigh from below.

"Are you two done?" A thick truxican accent ruined the moment.

Krieg and Maya jumped away from each other, the latter nearly toppling Salvador, who looked on in mild disgust from his spot on the ground. The rag was balled up in her closed fist and Maya looked at it, then hid it behind her back, trying her best to look innocent with a forced smile.

The gunzerker just rolled his eyes at the pair and sat up from his spot, moving away from the PDA and shaking his head. He joined the others gathered at the far end of the platform.

Gaige's pigtails bobbed from where she stood in front of them all, watching the pixels strain themselves into form with bated breath. She beckoned the two stray hunters over with a yell.

Maya found her voice, "We should, uh, probably get over there." She didn't meet his eye as they walked forward, opting instead to look down at her hand resting one hip. The other one snaked around his bicep when they joined the others. She gave him a squeeze and a nod, smiling up at him while Gaige made quick work digistructing the car they'd been waiting around for.

Gaige bowed low, celebrating her latest victory over technology. "Aaaaaand, voila!" The blue light of digistructed blueprints came into view and metal materialized, molded onto the vehicle in panels. "One Bandit Technical, coming right up!"

Their vehicle digistructed fully formed and fell onto the platform, tires absorbing the shock of mechanical rebirth. It was a car alright, but I wasn't what they'd been hoping for.

It wasn't a Bandit Technical. It was a Runner. A _two-passenger _Runner.

Five vault hunters looked at Gaige and a tumbleweed blew across the platform with perfect timing. The mechromancers smile was still fixed in place and her mouth didn't move, she spoke through clenched teeth.

"What. The. Fuck."

"GAIGE." The group groaned in unison and Maya dropped her face into her hands to scream. Gaige put her hands up in defense.

"I can fix this." She couldn't fix this. "I'll just- I'll just take another look at the-" Before Gaige could reach the service panel the whirring cut off and the mechanical humming slammed to a halt. Something popped from within the machine and sparks blew in a string of crunching noises, each one brought another flinch from the group, standing in the shade and watching helplessly.

Gaige squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her lips together and holding breath. Finally, the noises stopped. Sparks sputtered from the smoking Catch-A-Ride system, and Gaige's eyes cracked open again. She chuckled nervously.

"Well. At least it can't get any w-" The user interface panel fell forward and out of the machine, shattering its glass touchscreen on the metal platform. Gaige ate her words, eyes bulging out of her head as she screamed with her mouth shut. The rest of the party looked on in bereavement and the rigged Catch-A-Ride caved in on itself, dead.

No one spoke.

Maya cleared her throat.

"Were you about to say 'worse'?"


	10. Chapter 10: Opportunity Pt 2

**Authors note: Part 2, reposted with revisions. Content warning: Explicit Sexual content, 18+, reader discretion strongly advised.**

_So. This is how we're gonna die._

The voice echoed in his ear and Krieg shifted in the rusted lawn chair, trying to find a spot where the residual sand wasn't riding up into his pants. Underneath him the runner hummed and his knee bounced along with it, idling on the platform.

_I always thought it'd be Hyperion. Or bandits. Or a lucky bullymong. Death by roadkill might be fitting though._

The other vault hunters climbed aboard the runner one by one, bickering amongst themselves for the driver's seat. Zer0's hologram flickered in the gunner seat, having called dibs on that spot. Kriegs head spun watching it, as the turret seat itself went around and around but the sputtering hologram was motionless, digital.

_This is a bad idea. _The sentiment ping-ponged around his skull like a screensaver. His neck twitched with anticipatory glee whenever it hit the corner just right.

Greasy, unoccupied fingers picked at the peeling duct tape attaching the seat, perched above the metal grate of the runner's turbo booster. His other hand gripped the railing in front of him, already attuned to the scratch of metal on metal as the lawn chair slipped.

Krieg snapped his head forward to listen as the others bickered, nerves a little dull from the forehead down. The words poured back out his ears more often than they were understood, but he managed to garner some scant meaning from the jumbled mess.

Axton wanted to drive but Sal wanted to drive and Zer0 wanted to shoot but _Gaige_ wanted to shoot and over it all, Maya tried to mediate with dwindling patience. Krieg stripped off another foot of duct tape.

_Hey_, the voice shouted, and the ping-pong words drove into the fleshy space between his eyes_. Duct tape isn't gonna keep us from falling off the bumper, but it would help if you weren't pulling it off, jackass._

Krieg didn't want to hear it. He slammed his forehead into the railing, shouting: "No backseat DRIVERS! You want fun? Come get your HALF PRICE PING-PONG PADDLES, dominatrix_ NOT _included!"

Zer0 materialized for real only to flash a ':D' emoji Krieg's way, which could have either meant amusement or agreement, he wasn't sure.

Maya shot them a disapproving look and rolled her eyes. In front of her Axton and Sal seemed about ready to duel and she wasn't in the mood to heal both of them, more likely she'd leave the loser tied to the Catch-A-Ride platform. She was inclined to ask Krieg to crush Salvador into a compact ball that'd fit in the glove compartment, and doubly eager to have Axton tied up with vending machine cords and strapped to the hood.

Her psycho was busy banging his forehead into the railing so she shrugged the thought off and suggested her friends do the mature thing.

"Rakks paper scissors." She interjected, shouting over a mix of angry Spanish and Axton's increasingly heated military bark, "_Now_."

"Oh c'mon, Maya. We're not _children_." Axton said, after acting like a child for nearly a half-hour. The argument resumed as if she'd never spoken and Maya pinched the bridge of her nose. Kriegs eye twitched watching it all. The tape peeled and peeled, waiting, and waiting, after already waiting so long-

"Ghhrah- TICK TOCK!" Krieg smacked the body of the car with an open palm and screamed over the squabbling, "Stack your sorry sardines into the can or I WILL turn this car around!"

Ax and Sal threw rakks paper scissors for the driver's seat. Axton won, Salvador took the blunt end of his shotgun to bruise the soldiers shins regardless. The rest of the hunters piled in wherever they could fit and Maya watched, adjusting Gaige in her spot to keep her from slipping off the edge. The younger girl clung tight to the side with her metal fist and Krieg couldn't help but feel proud seeing Gaige hanging on like a true psycho. _It's all in the shoulder_, he wanted to add, if he was coherent enough to coach her.

Maya hopped down from Gaige's side and gave the mess a once-over. "Is everybody on board?"

"Everybody's in." Axton said with a wink, "Everybody but you, princess."

She ignored the comment for his sake. Maybe she should've tied him to the hood after all, but knowing him he might enjoy it. "I've got a spot. Rev the engine Ax, we're getting out of here."

He whistled and another flirty jab rolls out of his mouth. "10-4, hot stuff."

Maya was beyond caring but Krieg shot him a dirty look in the rearview mirror as Ax tweaked it.

"Keep your hands INSIDE THE VEHICLE, PRETTY BOY." He shouted, and Axton met his glare in the mirror. Kriegs evil-eye was greeted by a flash of sunlight invading his retinas, glinting off the reflection of Axton's white teeth.

Krieg squinted at the row of perfect white. The light, the white, the numbness of his head and the heat down his spine, recalled the memory of gleaming enamel, of an unperturbed golf ball perched on a desk. Beside it was a framed photo of the _good _doctor, the one that stunk of mints and cat piss, the one with nine fingers in Krieg's memory but ten in the photo.

The photographer had captured Doc at the height of his swing, nine-iron high, and Krieg imagined the spray of Axton's teeth on the green, sending his skull splitting with one swing. Maybe a whole golf course of perfect dentistry, lined up hole by hole, maw by maw, one jaw onto the next, and God, he might never get the stains out of his golf-slacks. He imagined a golf trophy, a gold cup filled to the brim with teeth like movie popcorn, the mental image was so good he didn't notice Mayas voice until she was shouting in his ear.

"Krieg!" The breeze of her breath yanked him off the golf course and back into the lawn chair, onto the runner and the blasts of hot air from the plains around. Sunlight haloed her, spilled shadows onto him, and he reveled in her eclipse, trying to make out her words, read her lips, peel the tennis skirt off with a yank that translated into another foot of duct tape peeled off the chair. She shouted over the rumbling engine, pointing at his lap.

"Is this spot taken?"

* * *

They hurtled down a Hyperion highway pushing ninety in a bucket. The chair creaked, tape fluttered, and the psycho's hands were locked in place for dear life. One meaty paw gripped the railing and other, gentler, her_ hip_. So gentle that he'd tried to hover rather than touch, and more than once Maya had reached down to tighten his grip on her with her hand above his. Each time he felt another wave of blood flee his brain.

Above spanned the endless blue sky at noon. The tiniest spec of a city on the Horizon reflected the light off of monumental skyscrapers and Maya could spot, even at this distance, the shimmer of a bubble shield outlined in hexagons. The highway bridge that connected Pandora's cleanest corporate zit stretched on for ages, miles, as far as Jack could manage to escape mainland.

She could've shed tears of joy to be in motion again, feel the wind on her skin. It whipped her hair behind her and she hovered over Kriegs lap like a jockey on a racetrack, bouncing with each bump in the road.

Tendrils of electric blue whipped into his face, and his outer half would have tried to catch them in his mouth if not for the mask. He knew for a fact that they weren't raspberry-flavored but the scent of her shampoo slipped through, smelling like berries on sweat and he wanted to breathe it in, to taste it, sweet and salty all over his tongue and then, well, he was sent back to square one, short tennis skirts and yellow tape.

Another jab from the backseat:_ If we ask nicely,_ it taunted_, maybe she'll sit on our face instead_.

Krieg jerked his head back in retort, "Shut shut SHUT up! I _will_ turn this car around, MISTER!"

"You good back there?" Maya shouted over her shoulder and Krieg jumped. He had loosened his grip as he yelled. Given the speed, Maya was worried she might fall right off without him to hold her there. Krieg lightly butted his head between her shoulder blades and sighed.

"_PEACHY_ KEEN."

"Hold on tighter, then!" She said, "I feel like we're gonna fall if you don't, and I'm not eager to see what my arm looks like without the skin!"

She'd been riding above him up until this point, keeping her stance above his lap. Over the last few bumps, she'd allowed herself to fall lower, dipping to grind onto his lap. The runner crested another bump along the concrete bridge and Maya bounced into his lap. She gripped the railing to steady and his palm flattened on her hip, pads to the blue skin. The lawn chair was slipping.

"Click-it or TICKET," He shouted back, hand firm on her hip. "Time for a crash-test!"

A few heads turned to listen to their back and forth, Zer0 and Gaige specifically, but they turned back around and the spectacle passed. They seemed to ignore the hum of voices unless Krieg yelled, and so far his attempt to diffuse the tension was going about as smoothly as the roadkill they bumped over.

Maya pressed his palm firmer into her side, into the meat of her hip where calloused fingertips met smooth skin and he squeezed reverently. Krieg did as he was told, gripped her and pulled her down. Maya was nonplussed by the building grind, by bouncing in his lap, but things were beginning to stiffen not far south.

_Something else,_ the voice screamed, _think about literally __**anything**__ else._

"Guh huh huhh, doncha' _love_ a little blood loss?" He murmured, "Can't pitch a tent without a few BONES."

His head jerked around, another jab from the inside, an exasperated echo. _Just try not to poke __**her**__, will you? _

Krieg hung his head and stared down at his lap where, yes, there was a problem arising.

Maya was sitting there, and every bump and jolt of Axton's shitty driving bounced her in his lap, grinding against his_ problem_.

He distracted himself. His eye followed the grooves of her combat suit that wove and dipped, that reunited in one zippered line down her spine. There was the sweet hug of the fabric, the reflection of the sun on her yellow metal armor, and every little nick and cut that allowed slivers of her skin shine through. And then there was the best distraction: her tattoos.

Little bubbles of shape, curling over her skin like lace.

Tattoos on her arm, her shoulder, tattoos that dipped behind her suit to hide demurely from his eye. Krieg followed the dips and flourishes and his hand drifted away from her hip, tracing where he thought the blue rivers might flow beneath. One meaty index finger swirled the symbols in her skin and he brushed up her spine to the junction where her turtleneck ended and her fuzzy patch of hair began and, what do you know, there are tattoos beneath the hair, starburst curls of blue.

His palm covered the back of her head easily. He ran his fingers through the fluff, gently massaging, testing, brushing the hair aside to follow the designs.

"Having fun?" Mayas hand met his and Krieg snapped back to reality.

"What did I just say about holding on?" She sighed, exasperated, but she'd leaned into the touch a moment before. Maya shook her head and leaned down into his lap, against his chest, so close that a whisper was enough. She could look him in the eye if she strained to look, "You're sweet but c'mon, hold _onto_ me. Here,"

Her hand guided his hand from the nape of her neck down, pulling his palm down the curve of her shoulder, over the swell of her breast plate, her ribcage, her hip and thigh, until she affixed his grip there. Maya pressed his splayed fingers into the soft fabric of her inner thigh and his brain convulsed. Then she withdrew, leaving his digits to twitch in ecstatic horror at the proximity of it all.

The look he gave her must've been severe, Maya laughed at the way his eye flicked down and up again, panicking, but she just shook her head and gripped the railing.

"I told you to hold on tight."

It was a joke, a tease, an invitation, and the ball was in his court. He was left there, groping the inside of her thigh, clinging to it when they bounced.

Krieg labored to breathe. _This is bad_, he thought, attuned to the problem undoubtedly rubbing up the crux of her legs, _very very very bad. _

Miles of the highway remained and Krieg felt tension build with every bump, every pull and grind, and Maya could feel it, brush against him when she dipped down. She cast a look over her shoulder, cheeks reddening and not from the sun. It was a game, Krieg realized, and he might as well win.

The mask had to go. He shoved it up over his nose with one desperate motion and he was blind, but free. The hand rushed back to hold the railing, creaking it in his grip. Maya gasped, jumped forward when he buried his face in her scalp. As instructed, he pulled her back, holding tight.

"What the hell?" She hissed back at him, but the annoyance in her tone fell into a groan when the kissing began. Krieg pressed his nose into her scalp, breathing in the berries with gulps of air. He grunted at her protest and smothered kisses into her hair, behind her ears, down the nape of her neck..

"God, _Krieg_-!" Maya gasped and nearly lost her grip. He kissed whatever he could reach in a wild desperate smatter, panting between mumbled half-words that Maya felt rather than heard, her back pressed into rumbling the cage of his chest. He sucked on her earlobe and she ground down into him, _hard_.

Maya squirmed and his grip tightened on the inside of her thigh. She reeled forward and spasmed when his digits brushed closer to her middle. As if sensing her impending protest he pulled her in again, licked his dry lips and leaned into her ear. "Don't worry, sweetmeats." Krieg groaned, "it's a _good _touch." His tongue darted out to wet the shell of her ear and Mayas lips parted. They fell back into a slow, dirty grind.

Her weight shifted in his lap. She freed her hand and in the next instant she yanked him up by the collar. The lawn chair threatened to blow right off the edge and the leather bit into his neck, but pain translated into a burst of pleasure. Their motion forced a repeat of his thrust, grinding up into her. The fabric of their pants was hot and damp, adding to the drag, the sweet friction of it all.

"More," She angled to breathe into his ear and strangle him with the collar, twisting tighter, tighter. "Keep doing that- whatever that is. Harder," She's whispering as if the wind hasn't carried her voice away, "-_please_."

Their friends were five feet away. Axton's mug in the rearview window, Gaige clinging to the side. In a sick way, it was even better because of all that, because they might get caught, and he was in no position to refuse.

"You gotta' c_hoke it outta me_." He bit out as they sunk into the lawn chair, "_Please_, please, please, choke me _please_." Krieg whined into her ear, "More, more,_ MORE pain!_"

More fuzzy kisses, smothered into her neck, more friction where they meet, grinding together. His fingertips brushed against the crotch of her pants and he received a hard yank on the leather neckband, a resounding 'yes'.

Maya felt her soul leave her body when Zer0's head jerked to the side, a rush of adrenaline when he ignored them and stayed his gaze front. Just the thought of what they're doing was getting her off.

"I can _such_ be a good boy," Krieg whined in her ear, "_Harder_! Yank me, spank me, God I'm gonna season you JUST right, just the way you like it if you, gah, if you, hah..." She clenched her fist and crushed his windpipe, leaving him to pant and grind. His eye rolled back into his skull and the thought died. There was an explosion building, tight as a drum, racing closer like a runner on the freeway.

"Shh," Maya hissed and yanked again. No meant yes, yes meant no, yank meant harder and quieter and _more_. "A little quieter, please, and for fucks sake harder, Krieg."

"Yes ma'am," He grunted, closing in on his finish line, "_Harder ma'am_!"

Maya twisted, airflow stopped and the grinding did _not s_top it mounted, and mounted, and built, and when Maya jerked her body forward he pulled her in to slam her down onto him. The groping was desperate, his breathing erratic, and he stifled his moan into the fuzz of her hair as he finished, sending bubbles of mess through the fabric of his pants, spitting onto her pants.

Krieg panted, drooled, and threw subtlety to the wind. He took her needs into his own hand vis-à-vis the clitoris, rubbing her with the same frantic need.

"God," Maya hissed, "God, God, God, _God_! Fuck, _fuck_!" She squirmed, moaned, cursed like he'd never heard but it was the sweetest sound.

"Louder." He breathed in her air, "_Loude_r."

"No! God, Krieg!" Her moans were soft and low and just for him, but his pleading broke her over the edge.

Maya said it again when she found her finish line, 'God', she gasped and was rocked by the rubbing of his slick fingers down her slit. She came, jerked her hips into his hand as Krieg rubbed a wet divot into the crotch of her pants.

After a minute she brushed him away gently and he gripped the rail. His fingers were sticky, and if they weren't hanging on for dear life he might've even tasted it. Krieg shook his head, spent, and held onto her instead.

Maya slumped back down, looking up at him from his lap with big eyes, completely lost in the haze. She breathed out slowly and they eased back into reality. The world fell into place around them, the car, the bridge, the speed, and wind. She licked her lips.

"Round two on the way back?" Maya asked. His wet hand tightened its grip on her thigh, and Krieg realized he might never see runners the same way again.


End file.
